Striking the Right Balance Between Sustainable Development and Sustainable Debt
Over the past two decades, sub-Saharan Africa has made considerable economic progress: extreme poverty levels have declined by one third; life expectancy has increased by a fifth; and real per capita income has grown by about 50 percent on average. Yet, sub-Saharan Africa is still only half-way to meeting the Sustainable Development Goals. […]
New Data on World Debt: A Dive into Country Numbers
By Marialuz Moreno Badia and Paolo Dudine
The new update of the IMF’s Global Debt Database shows that total global debt (public plus private) reached US$188 trillion at the end of 2018, up by US$3 trillion when compared to 2017. […]
Building Collaboration Without Crisis
By Ian Bremmer and David Lipton
Versions: عربي (Arabic), 中文 (Chinese), Français (French), 日本語 (Japanese), Русский (Russian), and Español (Spanish)
Too often, a spirit of international cooperation evaporates just when it is most needed and most promising. And then, lack of cooperation leads to crisis; crisis belatedly forces cooperation; but that cooperation must begin with picking up the pieces.
The Whole Can Be Greater Than the Sum of its Parts
By Vitor Gaspar, Maurice Obstfeld and Ratna Sahay
There are policy options to bring new life into anemic economic recoveries and to counteract renewed slowdowns. Our new paper, along with our co-authors, debunks widespread concerns that little can be done by policymakers facing a vicious cycle of (too) low growth, (too) low inflation, near-zero interest rates, and high debt levels.
Tariffs Do More Harm Than Good at Home
Versions in: عربي (Arabic), 中文 (Chinese), Français (French), 日本語(Japanese), Русский (Russian), Español (Spanish)
A longstanding challenge for the global economy is the possibility that some countries compete for export markets through artificially low prices. Political leaders and pundits sometimes propose import tariffs to offset the supposed price advantages and exert pressure for policy changes abroad. What proponents often fail to realize is that such tariff policies, while certainly hurting their targets, can also be very costly at home. And surprisingly, the self-inflicted harm can be substantial even when trade partners do not retaliate with tariffs of their own. […]
China’s Rebalancing Explained in 6 Charts
The Overwhelming Case for a Carbon Tax in China
By Ian Parry and Philippe Wingender
Version in 中文 (Chinese)
A single policy could do it all for China. A carbon tax—an upstream tax on the carbon content of fossil fuel supply—could dramatically cut greenhouse gases, save millions of lives, soothe the government’s fiscal anxieties, and boost green growth. […]
In Transition: The Outlook for Latin America and the Caribbean
By Versions in: Português (Portuguese), Español (Spanish)
Following a rough start at the beginning of the year, both external and domestic conditions in Latin America and the Caribbean have improved. But the outlook for the region is still uncertain.
Commodity prices have recovered since their February 2016 trough, but they are still expected to remain low for the foreseeable future. This has been accompanied by a brake—or even a reversal—in the large exchange rate depreciations in some of the largest economies in the region.
Emigration Slows Eastern Europe’s Catch Up With the West
(Versions in: Bulgarian, Czech, Estonian, Hungarian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, and Slovenian)
The opening up of Eastern Europe to the rest of the world in the early 1990s brought about tremendous benefits. The inflow of capital and innovation has led to better institutions, better economic management, and higher efficiency. On the flip side, it has also led to sizable and persistent outflow of people.