Diseases and development: Does life expectancy increase income growth?
Cervellati, Matteo, Sunde, Uwe. Does rising life expectancy boost economic growth? Existing evidence is mixed, with the relationship appearing to change over time. This column presents recent research showing that living longer may have a negative effect on growth to begin with, but once fertility declines the effect becomes significantly positive. Moreover, higher life expectancy […]
A tale of three countries: recovery after banking crises
Darvas, Zsolt. Three small, open European economies — Iceland, Ireland and Latvia – experienced serious trouble during the global financial crisis. Behind their problems were rapid credit growth and expansion of other banking activities in the years leading up to the crisis, largely financed by international borrowing. The crisis hit Latvia harder than any other […]
Blanchard on 2011’s four hard truths
Blanchard, Olivier. 2011 was supposed to be the year that saw the back of the Global Crisis. Alas, the crisis is still with us as the North Atlantic banking part of the crisis morphed into the Eurozone crisis, and slow growth in advanced countries once again threatens emerging economies. In this column, IMF chief economist […]
The Great Economic Divide Makes Everyone Poorer
Thoma, Mark. The argument that the rich should pay a larger share of our tax bill than the poor does not rest upon fairness alone. As Robert Frank explains in his book The Darwin Economy, requiring the rich to pay a larger share allows us to have more goods and services than we would have […]
Europe must change course on banks
Veron, Nicolas. The Eurozone crisis keeps evolving along multiple dimensions. On the sovereign debt front, no deal is yet in sight on Greece’s debt restructuring, and Italy and Spain face major refinancing needs in early 2012. On the institutional reform front, the summit on December 9 fell short of delivering a true fiscal union, and […]
Examples of Currency Breakup
Varma, Jayath. Since the prophets of gloom and doom are now talking openly of a possible breakup of the euro zone, I thought it would be useful to look back at some instances of breakup of currencies to see what really happens. I have chosen some examples based on my familiarity with them and describe […]
Keynesophobia
Krugman, Paul. Dean Baker is once again justifiably mad at Robert Samuelson. It is indeed frustrating that after three years in which Keynesian predictions have been spectacularly correct, pundits insist on reading the evidence as a rejection of Keynes. Πηγή: The New York Times πλήρες κείμενο
Chronic Confusion
Krugman, Paul. A quick note — I’ve seen several news reports in the past few days asserting that the structural problems of southern Europe have caused “chronic” trade deficits. Like the notion that all of the troubled countries were fiscally irresponsible, this is a morality-play falsehood that keeps being stated as a fact by reporters […]
Rating agencies and sovereign credit risk assessmen
Véron, Nicolas, Wolff, Gunstram. Credit rating agencies (CRAs) have not consistently met the expectations placed on them by investors and policymakers. It is difficult, however, to improve the quality of ratings through regulatory initiatives. In the short term, changes to the CRAs’ regulatory environment, in a context of high market uncertainty, may add to market […]
China’s dominance hypothesis and the emergence of a tripolar global currency system
Fratzscher, Marcel, Mehl, Arnaud. Is the international monetary system tripolar – with the US dollar, the euro, and the Chinese renminbi at each corner? This column presents empirical evidence to suggest that the renminbi is already well on its way to being the dominant currency in Asia. Πηγή: Voxeu πλήρες κείμενο