Finance & Development articles from June 2004

Finance & Development archives from June 2004

From the editor.(Editorial)
June 1, 2004... ON MAY 1, as fireworks illuminated Europe's skies from the Atlantic Ocean to the North Sea and the Baltic Sea to the Mediterranean, 10 countries joined the European Union (EU). with the new members, the EU swelled to more than 450 million...

Infections, epidemics, and pandemics.(Letters To The Editor)(Letter to the Editor)
June 1, 2004... In the March 2004 issue, Bloom, Canning, and Jamison argue persuasively that greater investment in health is necessary to achieve development goals. They highlight the devastating economic impact that HIV is having in sub-Saharan Africa and...

Culture matters more than institutions.(Letters To The Editor)
June 1, 2004... Three articles in the September 2003 issue explain that setting up and managing the right public institutions is the key to development. This seems to be the new mantra of international financial institutions. It is also the basis for the...

Global surveillance--for whose benefit?(Letters To The Editor)
June 1, 2004... "Assessing Offshore Financial Centers" (September 2003), seems to imply that bodies like the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), and the IMF have a right to exercise...

Push to revive stalled trade talks.(Brief Article)
June 1, 2004... Developed and developing countries are giving a new push to the stalled Doha Round of global trade negotiations. Both groups called for the early resumption of global trade talks after discussions at the IMF-World Bank spring meetings in...

Waste plagues small island states.(Brief Article)
June 1, 2004... As if rising sea levels, overfishing, water shortages, and inadequate sanitation service were not enough, the world's small island states are lacing a new problem: rubbish. According to the United Nations Environment Program, island states are...

IMF ready with trade cushion.(International Monetary Fund)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2004... The IMF said it is ready to help cushion the short-term adverse impact of trade liberalization on small developing countries with its new Trade Integration Mechanism. A qualifying member country may request funding if it expects a net balance...

MDGs proving elusive.(Millennium Development Goals )(Brief Article)
June 1, 2004... A report by the IMF and the World Bank warns that, on current trends, most developing countries will fail to meet most of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The Global Monitoring Report 2004 shows uneven progress toward the first MDG of...

Events coming up in 2004.(Brief Article)(Calendar)
June 1, 2004... June 14-15, Madrid, Spain Dollars, Debt, and Deficits--60 Years After Bretton Woods, Co-organizers: Banco de Espana and IMF July 11-16, Bangkok, Thailand XV International AIDS Conference October 4-5, Washington, D.C. IMF-World Bank...

Car crashes cost billions.(Brief Article)
June 1, 2004... Road crashes kill 1.2 million people a year and injure or disable 50 million. They cost low- and middle-income countries $65 billion in extra health spending and forgone family income--more than the total official development assistance the...

30 years ago in F&D.(Finance & Development )(Brief Article)
June 1, 2004... "The international monetary system is facing its most difficult period since the 1930s. As a result of recent developments in oil prices and supply, 1974 will almost certainly be a year of staggering disequilibrium in the global balance of...

Budget guru takes a stand: a public policy servant underscores the importance of taming unbridled deficits.(People In Economics)(Biography)
June 1, 2004... ALICE RIVLIN has spent much of her 30 plus years in public service trying to keep budgets in check, including that of the U.S. government. When she joined the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in 1994, she inherited a budget...

Beyond integration: squaring Europe's social preferences with robust growth.(Europe)
June 1, 2004... TEN NEW members joined the European Union (EU) on May 1 in the biggest enlargement of the community since its inception. Just 15 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, eight Central and Eastern European countries joined, along with Cyprus and...

Euro turns five: Europe's grand experiment.(Back To Basics)
June 1, 2004... THIS JANUARY marked the five-year anniversary of the European single currency--the euro. A historic milestone in the process of European integration, the euro has created a new monetary reality for 300 million Europeans that few would have...

Growing pains: dissecting the causes of Europe's lagging economic performance.
June 1, 2004... FOLLOWING World War II, European economies entered a 30-year period of rising prosperity. This golden age was one of rapid catch-up with the United States in terms of GDP per capita. The pattern of growth was consistent with the conventional...

Can Europe afford to grow old?(Picture This)
June 1, 2004... OVER THE coming decades, an increasing share of the European Union's (EU's) population will turn elderly as baby boomers reach retirement age and life expectancy rises. This is true of both the 15 original members and the 10 new ones....

Europe's quest for fiscal discipline: will the Stability and Growth Pact help Europe find the right balance between fiscal discipline and flexibility?(The Stability and Growth Pact)
June 1, 2004... WHILE THE euro area's monetary policy is conducted by a single institution--the European Central Bank (ECB)--fiscal, policy remains decentralized. When Europe s leaders agreed to form the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) in 1989, they...

How should the Stability and Growth Pact be reformed: three points of view on the future of Europe's fiscal pact.(Point Of View)(Stability and Growth Pact)
June 1, 2004... Consensus that the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP) will need some adjustment appears to be growing. The recent failure of the European Union's (EU's) Council of Economic and Financial Affairs (ECOFIN)to follow the Pact's prescriptions for...

Charting a course toward successful euro adoption: newest EU entrants should reap net gains from joining the euro area.
June 1, 2004... THE FIRST WAVE of transition countries to join the European Union (EU) are turning their attention to the next step in their integration with Europe--replacing their national currencies with the euro. Upon joining the EU, these countries also...

Accelerate change: higher saving is the key to higher growth for new EU members.
June 1, 2004... FOR THE EIGHT Central and Eastern European countries (CEE-8) that have just joined the European Union (EU), membership marks the fulfillment of their main political and economic goal of the past decade. Without doubt, meeting all the EU's entry...

New citizens, old borders: why Europe has not put out the welcome mat for its new members.
June 1, 2004... THE EUROPEAN UNION (EU) welcomed the citizens of the 10 new member countries (NMCs) by shutting the door in their faces. Actually, it did worse than that. Because there is no agreement at the EU level on common rules to be applied to the new...

Microfinance and the poor: breaking down walls between microfinance and formal finance.(Microfinance Institutions)
June 1, 2004... CONTRARY TO a common impression, poor people need and use a variety of financial services, including deposits, loans, and other services. They use financial services for the same reasons as anyone else: to seize business opportunities, improve...

Bank on wheels: a recent experiment has brought banking services to Vietnam's poorest.
June 1, 2004... MA SEO SANG, a Hmong widow living on less than 25 cents a day in the mountainous region of Vietnam, needed help. She had sold her pig to pay for her husband's funeral, paid a fine incurred by her son by selling one of her buffalo, and redeemed...

View from the inside: the Korean CEO who managed Seoul Bank's restructuring and successful privatization in 2000-02 recounts his experience.(Company Profile)
June 1, 2004... IN LATE 1997, when it approached the IMF for assistance, Korea was in the midst of a fun-blown banking crisis, with Seoul Bank at the forefront. The crisis was brought on by the bankruptcies of several large industrial conglomerates and...

40 years on: on F&D's 40th birthday, a former Editor-in-Chief of the magazine reviews four decades of publishing.(Finance & Development)(Company Profile)
June 1, 2004... THE INITIAL impetus for what was to become Finance H Development came from the late Frank J. Southard, then IMF Deputy Managing Director, who was renowned for his stern oversight of every aspect of the IMF's operations. He conceived of a "Fund...

The other IT: getting the big picture.(Book)(Book Review)
June 1, 2004... Edwin M. Truman Inflation Targeting in the World Economy Institute for International Economics, Washington, D.C., 2003, 288 pp., $25 (paper). STARTING in the early 1990s, many countries--initially industrial and, later, emerging market...

Still living dangerously?(Book)(Book Review)
June 1, 2004... Theodore Friend Indonesian Destinies The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England, 2003, 628 pp., $35 (cloth). INDONESIA is the world s fourth most populous nation and its most populous...

Markets versus the masses.(Book)(Book Review)
June 1, 2004... Javier Santiso The Political Economy of Emerging Markets Actors, Institutions and Crisis In Latin America Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2003, 268 pp., $59.95 (cloth). JAVIER SANTISO, emerging economist for Latin America at Banco...

India: India's economy is rebounding strongly, providing a golden opportunity to tackle fiscal challenges decisively.(Country Focus)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2004... Growth was strong in fiscal year 2003/04 (April-March) after recent lackluster performance and declining Investment. India's economic ties with the rest of the world have strengthened, with services exports-largely Information...

Why are structural reforms so difficult? The benefits of structural reforms aren't always as obvious as the smaller, short-term costs.(Straight Talk)
June 1, 2004... MANY economic problems are due to problems in the working of markets, rather than, say, to resource shortages or an excess or deficiency of overall demand. To most economists, the need for structural reforms--measures that change the...