VOLUME I

Not to be confused with Managing International Political Risk, also edited by Moran. (Hard to think up new titles, it seems.) This slick edited volume is put out by MIGA, the World Bank's political risk underwriter, so of course it's all about political risk insurance.

For political risk insurance types, it's a great book. One section -- on the "science of pricing" -- describes how political risk underwriters assess risks, and may be of broader interest. But the rest -- the "multiple pledge of shares problem," "securitizing political risk insurance" -- won't thrill you unless you're interested in PRI.

VOLUME II

If reading about the arcana of political risk insurance in volume I merely served to whet your appetite, volume II is here to serve the main course.

Basically, this reprints papers from a political risk conference held at Georgetown a couple years back. As one of the presenters observed, if someone had bombed the conference, it would have been curtains for the industry -- the hard core of the world's political risk insurance types were mostly present. The papers in this book are a similarly good mix of opinions from leading brokers, underwriters and academics.