World Economics Journal Archive
The contents of all previous issues of World Economics are listed below. Subscribers have access to the complete back issue archive: click on titles to view abstracts and full text of articles (PDF). If you are not a subscriber, sign-up online now.
Latin America: From Recovery To Slowdown
José De Gregorio, World Economics, December 2015
Economic performance in Latin America has been disappointing. After a successful recovery from the global financial crisis, growth in 2014 was in most countries, much below expectations and in 2015, growth would still be low. Among the largest seven economies of the r ... More
Yin Yang Oil Prices and the Rise of African Economies: Policy Implications
Hippolyte Fofack, World Economics, December 2015
African oil exporters have been hard hit by the sustained decline in international oil prices. African oil importers are seeing dramatically lower oil import bills, but most have economies that are not energy-intensive enough to benefit greatly from the oil price change ... More
Risk Exposures in International and Sectoral Balance Sheet Data
Philip R. Lane, World Economics, December 2015
This paper outlines the opportunities and pitfalls for risk analysts in interpreting the information embedded in international and sectoral balance sheets. It places an emphasis on the different risks posed by net financial stock imbalances and the cross-holding of lar ... More
International Liquidity Management Since the Financial Crisis
Richhild Moessner & William A. Allen , World Economics, December 2015
This article discusses how international liquidity management has been affected by the recent crisis. It notes that since the Bretton Woods system collapsed in 1971 it was expected that the demand for international reserves would diminish, since countries were no longer ... More
To Establish a Balanced Multi-currency International Reserve System
Xinli Zheng, World Economics, December 2015
The dollar’s important role in the global economy is inevitably contradictory with its role as a sovereign currency. How to solve this contradiction? The combination of a multi-currency international monetary system, mainly made up of dollar, euro and Renminbi (RMB), as ... More
Has Excessive Public Debt Slowed World Growth?
Anthony J Makin, World Economics, December 2015
This paper contends that worldwide fiscal excess, as embodied in heightened public debt levels, is central to understanding why global growth has been sub-optimal since the transatlantic crisis. It notes that in the five years before the 2009-10 financial crisis averag ... More
Offshoring and the Labour Share in Germany and US: The Role of Different Policy Regimes
Deborah Winkler & William Milberg, World Economics, December 2015
Despite broad public concern with the effect of offshoring on inequality, there is scant research. The authors shift the focus to the effect of offshoring on the labour share in value added. Regression analysis for a sample of 14 OECD countries in 21 manufacturing secto ... More
Did increased inequality cause the Great Recession?
Tim Congdon, World Economics, September 2015
This paper considers the basis of the thesis of left-wing economist Thomas Piketty, the author of Capital in the Twenty-First Century, that “a market economy based on private property” has “powerful forces of divergence” which are likely to increase future inequality. A ... More
Korean Housing Finance, Household Debt, and Economic Growth
Danny Leipziger, Jeehoon Park & Yoon-Shik Park, World Economics, September 2015
Governments around the world are confronted with the problem of stoking demand and re-firing growth. The Korean government has relied on making mortgage credit more readily available to boost the housing market and energize the economy. However, this policy exposes Kore ... More
The IMF’s Uneasy Excursion into the Euro Zone
Graham Bird, World Economics, September 2015
Much of the evolutionary history of the International Monetary Fund reflects its responses to unanticipated events. The crisis in the Eurozone at the end of the 2000s was largely unexpected. For many years prior to the crisis, the IMF’s clientele had been made up of low ... More
The Eurozone: Was the UK Right to Opt Out?
Julian Gough, World Economics, September 2015
This article examines the performance of the British economy since the beginning of the single European currency in 1999, in relation to that of the Eurozone countries. The aim is to consider whether the retention of sterling with the freedom to pursue an independent mo ... More
Costing a Data Revolution
Gabriel Demombynes & Justin Sandefur, World Economics, September 2015
The lack of reliable development statistics for many poor countries has led the U.N. to call for a “data revolution” (United Nations, 2013). One fairly narrow but widespread interpretation of this revolution is for international aid donors to fund a coordinated wave of ... More
Data on Singapore’s Sovereign Wealth Fund is Flawed
Christopher Balding, World Economics, September 2015
This paper undertakes a critique of the quality of Singapore’s public economic data in the context of the claim that one of the island’s sovereign wealth funds, Temasek Holdings, reports that it has earned since inception in 1974 an average annualized rate of return of ... More
Can Intra-Regional Trade Act as a Global Shock Absorber in Africa?
Zuzana Brixiova, Qingwei Meng & Mthuli Ncube, World Economics, September 2015
The global financial crisis and the subsequent uneven recovery have underscored the need for Africa’s resilience to output and other shocks originated in the rest of the world. A comparison of two regional economic communities – the East African Community (EAC) and the ... More
Are There Limits to Green Growth?
Edward B. Barbier, World Economics, September 2015
Although there is progress in developing green sectors in some countries, the key challenge facing the expansion of economy-wide green innovation and structural change is the absence of relevant policy follow-up to the green stimulus enacted during the Great Recession. ... More
Investing in green growth for sustainable development in Africa
Hippolyte Fofack, World Economics, September 2015
An overview of the distributional impact of global warming shows that the negative externalities of carbon-intensive development models are already significant in Africa. The most compelling reasons for promoting green investments in Africa is the direct economic return ... More
Taking Stock of Microfinance
Antara Haldar & Joseph Stiglitz, World Economics, June 2015
This paper explores the current global turmoil in microfinance in the context of the problems that have arisen at SKS Microfinance in India. The authors argue that the roots of the current crisis lay in the attempt to scale-up the original “Grameen” model of microfinanc ... More
Quicksilver Markets
Theodore Berg, World Economics, June 2015
One of the missions of the Office of Financial Research is to analyse asset market valuations and if there are excesses, explore the potential financial stability ramifications of a sharp correction. The author argues that U.S. stock prices today appear high by historic ... More
Deflation? What Deflation? Statistical Origins of Japan’s Declining Price Levels
Masanaga Kumakura, World Economics, June 2015
Although Japan’s CPI is often criticized for potential upward bias, it deals with improvements in the quality of individual goods in ways that make the statistical inflation rate much lower than actual price changes. Moreover, the quantitative importance of this effect ... More
Inflation Targeting in Developing Countries
Anthony Gathogo & Wook Sohn, World Economics, June 2015
This paper analyzes economic and institutional factors that affect the likelihood of adopting an inflation-targeting monetary policy regime in emerging markets and developing countries. We use a logit model for a sample that comprises both inflation-targeting and non-ta ... More
What is Britain worth to the next generation?
Angus Hanton, World Economics, June 2015
Government economic policy implicitly aims to build up useful reserves for future generations, or at least to not burden our children and grandchildren with unsustainable debt. Surprisingly, even though this must be an important policy objective, it is rarely discussed ... More
What Have We Learned From the Global Financial Crisis of 2008-09 and its Aftermath?
Anthony Elson, World Economics, June 2015
This article summarizes a number of key lessons from the effects of the global financial crisis that, with the passage of time, are having an important impact on views about global financial stability, macroeconomic theory and policy, income inequality and the role of t ... More
Measuring GDP in Europe
World Economics, June 2015
In Europe the quality of national income statistics is less constrained by the capacity and resources devoted by national statistics offices to follow international best practice than is the case in many other parts of the world. In addition the members of the European ... More
Measuring The Americas GDP
World Economics, March 2015
The Americas, comprising the USA and Canada, the Spanish speaking countries of South and Central America plus Brazil and the Caribbean, is a region displaying large differences in living standards. The availability of resources has an impact on the quality and reliabili ... More
Is part of the Latvian economy already in the middle-income trap?
Igors Kasjanovs, World Economics, March 2015
There are fears that the observed moderation of growth rates in Latvia suggest it may soon be stuck in a Middle Income Trap. No uniform understanding has been reached as to what a Middle Income Trap is and what signs testify to its existence. In order to avoid the dange ... More
GDP as the champion of measurements: Story of an obsession
Mark Esposito & Terence Tse, World Economics, March 2015
This paper considers the importance of measurement in complex societies and notes that the concept of measuring macroeconomic variables such as GDP was grounded in the impact of the 1929 Wall Street Crash on America. Simon Kuznets, a Harvard economist, produced a report ... More
The Illusory Economic Gains from Hosting the Olympics & World Cup
Andrew Zimbalist, World Economics, March 2015
The IOC's Olympic Games and FIFA's World Cup are the two most popular global sporting events. Winning the rights to host these competitions comes with great fanfare. Yet except under special circumstances, the scholarly evidence suggests that hosting either event is no ... More
The Poverty of Statistics: Military Power, Defence Expenditure and Strategic Balance
Jan Ludvík, World Economics, March 2015
Military expenditure and the number of service personnel are the two features most commonly used to compare national military power. The question remains, however, to what extent these reflect the real-world situation. This study aims to provide an answer by using econo ... More