Asia Rising
Finance and Development Jun/Aug 2006
Explores Asia's role in the world economy. Plus: The challenges faced from globalization, the quest for greater regional financial integration, the problem of lagging investment, and why East Asia performed so much better than Latin America. It also looks at the recovery of Japan and the rise of India and China. The economies of the ASEAN-4 come under the microscope in Country Focus. Other articles examine financial sector reform in Africa and the remaining hurdles to financial integration in the European Union. People in Economics profiles Paul Krugman, Back to Basics focuses on hedge funds, and the Straight Talk column looks at the problem of underdevelopment.
Quest for the Cure
Erika Check (FP) Jul/Aug 2006
Warren Buffett’s unprecedented donation to fight poverty and improve global health could help rid the world of its most neglected diseases. But it isn’t just billionaires who have had enough of greedy drug companies, government bureaucracies, and public apathy. Now, some brave scientists are cutting through the red tape and high costs — and finding ways to buck the system.
Why God is Winning
Timothy Samuel Shah & Monica Duffy Toft Jul/Aug 2006
Damage Control
Barbara Crossette (FP) Jul/Aug 2006
John Bolton never liked the United Nations. So it’s no surprise that he’s now undermining it. Here’s how U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice can reel him in.
Global financial instability
Economist Aug 1, 2006
Beware of crocodiles and an Achilles heel.
The Disturbing Deterioration of Developed Economies
Desmond Lachman (AEI/FT) Aug 2, 2006
When musing about whether the emerging markets are converging with the industrialised countries, most market analysts mistakenly focus on improving emerging market fundamentals. In so doing, they miss the bigger picture. The main reason for emerging market convergence is that there are a number of developed countries whose economic fundamentals are deteriorating at a more rapid pace than those in the emerging markets are improving.
The Doha Debacle
Peter Sutherland (WSJ) Aug 2, 2006
Don't make the perfect the enemy of the good.
Don't Look Now, But the World Economy Is Booming
Nathan Smith (TCS Daily) Aug 3, 2006
Since 2004, world economic growth has been at its fastest pace since the 1970s, with developing countries surging ahead at six percent a year. We're on the right track. Let's try not to screw it up.
Hands Off Hedge Funds
WP Aug 6, 2006
Sometimes libertarians deserve to win an argument.
IMF and low-income countries
IMF Survey Aug 7, 2006
Plus: De Rato in Tokyo; U.K. poverty initiative; Palau, Lithuania, Ethiopia, Kuwait; Volatility in Latin America; U.S. home equity withdrawal; Botswana: avoiding the resource curse; India: tax reform; U.S corporate cash balances.
Wait Till Next Year, and the Year After and the Year After ....
Charles Finny (TCS Daily) Aug 7, 2006
We are at least three years before any substantive WTO negotiations resume.
Economic Patriotism - Blind Alley in a Globalized World?
Patricia Wruuck (YaleGlobal) Aug 8, 2006
Protecting favorite industries only postpones inevitable changes that can also be helpful
Managing Globalization: A New Trade Bandwagon - Are Rich-Poor Pacts Fair?
Daniel Altman (IHT) Aug 8, 2006
Countries scramble to find partners for two-way trade deals, poor substitutes for a worldwide trade
Global Dividends
WSJ Aug 9, 2006
Europe needs to embrace free trade and open markets.
The Enemy Within
Nikhil Bhat (TCS Daily) Aug 10, 2006
Internal trade barriers are hindering India's development.
When Labor Loses Out to Trade
Gustav Ranis and David Corderi (YaleGlobal) Aug 10, 2006
Governments have a range of policies to expand trade while minimizing the loss of jobs
U.S. Trade Gap Narrowed in June
NYT Aug 11, 2006
The trade deficit reached $64.8 billion in June, modestly below the $65 billion deficit recorded for May.
Why 'Outsourcing' May Lose Its Power as a Scare Word
NYT Aug 13, 2006
In the 2004 political season, offshore outsourcing — the practice of hiring lower-paid service workers in places like India to carry out tasks previously done by higher-paid American workers — became an important issue.
Sorry Times at Club Med: Why the Next Emerging Market Debt Crisis Won’t Involve an Emerging Market
Desmond Lachman (AEI) Aug 15, 2006
What is the main reason for the convergence of less developed economies toward developed economies?
Sanity Returns
Christopher Lingle (TCS Daily) Aug 15, 2006
In Asia, rising interest rates signal the end of excess global liquidity.
The Economics of Fear
Robert J. Samuelson (WP) Aug 16, 2006
This is an age of glaring contradictions. It's hard to ignore the great disconnect between the rise of terrorism and the relentless advance of the world economy. After Sept. 11, 2001, the reasonable fear was that terrorism and its nasty side effects -- more anxiety, uncertainty and security checks, and higher costs for moving people and cargo -- might cripple economic growth and frustrate the spread of globalization. It hasn't happened. Not yet, anyway.
Plan B for World Trade: Go Regional
C. Fred Bergsten (IIE/FT) Aug 16, 2006
To get world trade policy back on track, leaders of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum should launch a Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific (FTAAP) when they meet in Hanoi in November. This initiative would spur the revival of the Doha Round, just as APEC’s 1993 declaration that it would pursue “free and open trade and investment in the region” jolted the European Union into embracing enough agricultural liberalization to conclude the Uruguay Round. Countries outside APEC, such as India and Brazil as well as the European Union, would be hurt if this “plan B” were to supplant Doha so the incentive to global talks would be powerful. If an FTAAP launch failed in its primary goal of reviving Doha, it would then provide a second best but still powerful step toward global liberalization on its own. The prospect of eliminating most of Asia’s trade barriers would also help induce the US Congress to extend President George W. Bush's negotiating authority, which will otherwise expire next summer and doom any chance of reviving Doha.
A fair but fading wind
Economist Aug 17, 2006
Don't get your hopes up too high about growth in the euro area.
Preventing Misuse of Development Aid
Syed Mohammad Ali (Daily Times) Aug 18, 2006
Governments must ensure aid accountability, without imposing insurmountable obstacles for people most in need
India offers tariff concessions on Asean exports
IHT Aug 19, 2006
India offered new tariff concessions Friday on a range of imports including sensitive agricultural products to break a deadlock in trade negotiations with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.
The Real 'New Middle East'
Afshin Molavi (WP) Aug 20, 2006
Last month, as images of war and carnage in Lebanon filled Arab airwaves, more than 10 million Saudis joined together for a common goal. A massive political protest? No. A petition calling for an end to the fighting? Not that either. A boycott of American goods? No. So, what did 10 million Saudis -- more than half the adult population -- do? They bought stock.
U.S. fiscal outlook
IMF Survey Aug 21, 2006
Plus: U.S. inflation dynamics; Ireland, FYR Macedonia, El Salvador, Uruguay briefs; Egypt: growth and reform; Canadian female labor participation; EU: Stability and Growth Pact; Suspension of Doha talks; challenges of globalization
Water, water everywhere?
Economist Aug 21, 2006
Some two billion people are short of water. But, with a little ingenuity, there should be more than enough to go round.
WTO Talks Are a Whole Other Ball Game
Anders Åslund (IIE/Moscow Times) Aug 21, 2006
The Kremlin has misunderstood the nature of World Trade Organization (WTO) negotiations and must rethink its approach in five vital respects. First, the WTO is a club, and all applicants should conform to its rules. Therefore, Russia cannot throw its weight around. Second, Russia should accept the fact that the WTO imposes greater demands on big than on small countries in accession negotiations, as it did with China. Third, Russia should realize that the longer a country waits to join the WTO, the greater the number of conditions imposed. Fourth, the Kremlin constantly complains that US demands are political. In fact, they are commercial. Finally, the Kremlin does not understand that President George W. Bush faces more con straints at home in making trade rules than does President Vladimir Putin.
Forget the World Bank, Try Wal-Mart
Michael Strong (TCS Daily) Aug 22, 2006
Between 1990 and 2002 more than 174 million people escaped poverty in China, about 1.2 million per month.[1] With an estimated $23 billion in Chinese exports in 2005 (out of a total of $713 billion in manufacturing exports),[2] Wal-Mart might well be single-handedly responsible for bringing about 38,000 people out of poverty in China each month, about 460,000 per year.
The IMF's Asian Challenge
Desmond Lachman (TCS Daily) Aug 22, 2006
What a difference ten years make to the global economic landscape. Almost a decade ago, Asia was engulfed in a major economic and financial crisis that forced many Asian countries to go as supplicants to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Today, as the IMF prepares for its Annual Meeting next month in Singapore, the tables are completely turned. It is the IMF that is now desperately seeking to restore its legitimacy with a radically recharged Asia. And it is the IMF that now has to persuade Asia on the merits of cooperating to address today's large global payment imbalances.
Fighting poverty: The hard truth behind Asia's boom
IHT Aug 22, 2006
Without targeted programs, economic growth does not necessarily translate into poverty reduction.
Managing Globalization: Bad news travels faster, but so does aid
IHT Aug 22, 2006
Globalization has presented charitable groups with new opportunities, albeit with one or two challenging side effects.
Van Gogh From the Sweatshop
Martin Paetsch (Der Spiegel) Aug 23, 2006
Southern China is the world's leading center for mass-produced works of art. One village of artists exports about five million paintings every year -- most of them copies of famous masterpieces. The fastest workers can paint up to 30 paintings a day.
Smoot-Hawley's Revenge
WSJ Aug 23, 2006
Where patent and trade law meet to blow up the economy.
U.S. to Support More IMF Votes for China
Paul Blustein (WP) Aug 24, 2006
China will get U.S. backing for a modest increase in its voting power at the International Monetary Fund, a disappointment to people who argue that Beijing ought to be punished for maintaining an unfair currency system.
Foreign Capital and Economic Growth
Raghuram Rajan (IMF) Aug 25, 2006
The essential question our paper asks is, "Does foreign capital play a helpful, benign, or malign role in the process of economic growth?"
Reforming the United Nations
WP Aug 27, 2006
The United Nations has recently come in for a beating: It has been attacked over the oil-for-food scandal and treated with occasional contempt by the Bush administration. And yet the world's tendency to turn to the United Nations has if anything grown stronger.
U.S. seeks bigger IMF role for China and others, but Europe is balking
IHT Aug 28, 2006
The United States is seeking to increase the power of China and other countries within the International Monetary Fund to reflect their growing weight on the world economic stage, an effort that is being resisted by some European countries whose voices could be weakened within the organization.
The Yuan and the Greenback
Ronald I. McKinnon Aug 29, 2006
Exchange-rate changes against the dollar should be tightly controlled and gradual.
Why Globalization Is in Trouble - Part I
Branko Milanovic (YaleGlobal) Aug 29, 2006
Job loss and worry about identity make the West reconsider the value of trade and immigration
Why Globalization Is in Trouble - Part II
Branko Milanovic (YaleGlobal) Aug 31, 2006
The politics of global resentment will find many followers in the fragmented and weak undeveloped world.