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The New Role For Assurance Services In Global Commerce, Margaret M. Blair

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

In this Article we examine the rapid emergence and expansion of a private-sector compliance and enforcement infrastructure that we believe increasingly may be providing a substitute for public and legal regulatory infrastructure in global commerce, especially in developing countries where rule of law is weak and court systems are absent or inadequate. This infrastructure is provided by a proliferation of performance codes and standards, and a rapidly growing global army of privately trained and authorized inspectors and certifiers that we call the "third party assurance industry. " The growth in the third party assurance business has been phenomenal in the last ...