Finance & Development articles from March 2007

Finance & Development archives from March 2007

Friend or foe?(global Money supply and its effect)(Editorial)
March 1, 2007... SINCE 1995, global capital flows have tripled to $6.4 trillion--reaching about 14.5 percent of world GDP--after 15 years of staying within a relatively narrow range of 2-6 percent. Should the surge in capital swirling around the globe be cause...

Deficits can harm growth.(LETTERS TO THE EDITOR)(Letter to the editor)
March 1, 2007... There is one important omission from the otherwise comprehensive article by Atish Ghosh and Uma Ramakrishnan, "Do Current Account Deficits Matter?" (December 2006): it does not address the long-run growth consequences of deficits. The orthodox...

Trade deficits and lost keys.(LETTERS TO THE EDITOR)(Letter to the editor)
March 1, 2007... Thank you for "Do Current Account Deficits Matter?" It's amazing to me that the authors could explain something so complex in a short article so well. The article's conclusions seem to imply that the U.S. trade deficit is relatively benign. But...

Africa and bilateralism.(LETTERS TO THE EDITOR)(Letter to the editor)
March 1, 2007... With Chinas recent forays into Africa, the issue of bilateralism between Africa and the major world powers is very much in the news. The article by Abdoulaye Bio-Tchane and Benedicte Vibe Christensen in the December 2006 issue of F&D says...

Curbing impact of disasters.(Brief article)
March 1, 2007... The United Nations is pressing governments to speed up action to mitigate natural disasters in light of a UN report stating that changes in the atmosphere, oceans, glaciers, and ice caps show unequivocally that the world is warming and that it...

GAVI commits $500 million for health systems.(GAVI Alliance)(Brief article)
March 1, 2007... In an effort to further increase global immunization coverage, the GAVI Alliance (formerly known as the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization) says it will invest $500 million over five years to strengthen health systems in developing...

IMF takes a "major step" on key financial indicators.(Brief article)
March 1, 2007... The IMF has published standardized indicators from about 50 countries that allow analysts to assess the soundness of their banking sectors and compare them with those of other countries. Rob Edwards, Director of the IMF's Statistics...

Plant a tree: save the world.(Brief article)
March 1, 2007... As part of a project to save the planet from global warming, the United Nations Environment Program is urging the international community to plant a billion trees around the world this year to help rehabilitate degraded land and promote...

Events in 2007.(Calendar)
March 1, 2007... March 19-23, Cape Town, South Africa 7th Annual Conference of the Parliamentary Network of the World Bank March 24-25, Pretoria, South Africa Group of Twenty Deputies meeting April 14-15, Washington, D.C. Spring Meetings of the IMF and...

A master of theory and practice.(PEOPLE IN ECONOMICS)(biography on Guillermo Calvo )(Biography)
March 1, 2007... WHEN Guillermo Calvo was a young student in Buenos Aires in the late 1950s, he despaired of ever understanding economics. here was a lot of talk about economics at home because his father worked for the central bank. But as much as he tried to...

Financial globalization beyond the blame game: a new way of looking at financial globalization reexamines its costs and benefits.(Cover story)
March 1, 2007... FINANCIAL globalization--the phenomenon of rising cross-border financial flows--is often blamed for the string of damaging economic crises that rocked a number of emerging markets in the late 1980s in Latin America and in the 1990s in Mexico...

Global capital flows: defying gravity.(PICTURE THIS)(global capital movement on the rise)
March 1, 2007... TECHNOLOGICAL innovations and faster information flows, aided by a sharp increase in total savings being channeled into financial instruments across borders, have fostered the dramatic globalization of capital flows--defined as the flow of...

The paradox of capital.(Statistical data)
March 1, 2007... STANDARD economic theory tells us that financial capital should, on net, flow from richer to poorer countries. That is, it should flow from countries that have more physical capital per worker--and hence where the returns to capital are...

Converting a tiger.(POINT OF VIEW)(scope of liberalization on the Indian corporate world)(Viewpoint essay)
March 1, 2007... "The honey is sweet but the bee stings." Chinese proverb INDIA began liberalizing its capital account as part of wide-ranging economic reforms initiated in the early 1990s that reversed its 40-year experiment with centrally planned...

Wising up about finance: with tighter links between national economies and global financial markets, better financial analysis is critical to macroeconomic management.
March 1, 2007... DESPITE the internationalization of financial markets and the growing links between national financial systems, for the most part, economic policy is still conducted at the national level. The creation of global capital markets can therefore...

The changing face of investors: the implications for financial stability of the sharp rise in international capital flows.
March 1, 2007... CROSS-BORDER asset accumulation has risen dramatically over the past decade. After a period of relatively narrow fluctuations during 1980-95, global cross-border flows tripled during the past decade to $6.4 trillion, reaching about 14.5 percent...

Dealing with global fluidity: with new forces shaping global capital markets, participants in international finance are well advised to rethink their operating models.(POINT OF VIEW)
March 1, 2007... FINANCIAL markets are generally seen as providing the best unbiased insights into future economic developments. But in recent months, many market segments have appeared to be sending competing, if not confusing, signals, such as the following:...

From credit to crops: new research suggests that better financial development can directly boost nourishment.
March 1, 2007... ALTHOUGH most countries experienced healthy per capita growth rates in the 20th century, extreme poverty and undernourishment are still widespread. In 2001, GDP per capita was, on average, about $21 a day, but more than half the world's...

Back in the fast lane: as members of the middle-income country club, East Asian nations may need to update their growth strategy.
March 1, 2007... IN 1997-98, a financial crisis brought three East Asian middle-income countries--Indonesia, Korea, and Thailand--to their knees. It also affected Malaysia and the Philippines, which had difficulty sustaining growth. Many predicted that the...

Time to master disaster: innovations in insurance can help countries manage the fiscal impact of natural disasters.
March 1, 2007... WITH THE 2007 Atlantic hurricane season approaching in June, those living around the Caribbean basin will be watching the weather forecasts closely. It is hoped that the atmospheric calm of last year will be repeated, but the large losses from...

The euro: ever more global: the euro's future use will be shaped by factors largely outside policymakers' control.
March 1, 2007... MORE THAN eight years ago, the euro was launched amid enormous hopes and expectations about its future international role. Some even speculated that it might someday supplant the U.S. dollar as the most important international currency. There...

PPP versus the market: which weight matters?(BACK TO BASICS)
March 1, 2007... HOW fast is the global economy growing? Is China contributing more to global growth than the United States? Is the average person richer in Canada or in Switzerland? These types of questions are of great interest to economists and others, and...

Europe's golden age.
March 1, 2007... Barry Eichengreen The European Economy Since 1945 Coordinated Capitalism and Beyond Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, 2006, 504 pp., $35 (cloth). Barry Eichengreen is well known in IMF circles as a leading...

Power of the sun.("Solar Revolution: The Economic Transformation of the Global Energy Industry")(Book review)
March 1, 2007... Travis Bradford Solar Revolution The Economic Transformation of the Global Energy Industry MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2006, 248 pp., $24.95 (cloth). To many people, the idea that solar energy could become a serious...

Rise and fall of monetary paradigms.("Monetary Theory and Bretton Woods: The Construction of an International Monetary Order")(Book review)
March 1, 2007... Filippo Cesarano Monetary Theory and Bretton Woods The Construction of an International Monetary Order Cambridge University Press, New York, 2006, 262 pp., $80 (cloth). During the 1990s, many universities abandoned the study of...

Australia.(COUNTRY FOCUS)(macroeconomic policy for mining industry)(Brief article)
March 1, 2007... As one of the world's leading exporters of mining commodities such as coal and iron ore, Australia has been adjusting its macroeconomic policies to the recent large rise in international commodity prices. [GRAPHICS OMITTED]

Aid can work: aid effectiveness is getting better, even though it's tough to prove.(STRAIGHT TALK)
March 1, 2007... THE INTERNATIONAL call for increased aid to fight HIV/AIDS, cut extreme poverty, and expand access to clean water presumes that aid promotes development. This presumption lies behind most of the $106 billion dollars that international agencies...