Finance and Development: December 2009

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Stimulating a Green Recovery

Climate Policy in Hard Times

Benjamin Jones and Michael Keen
Restoring economic growth after the global financial crisis need not thwart the fight against climate change. Carbon pricing can strengthen fiscal positions, and improved climate resilience can promote macroeconomic stability.

A Changing Climate for Development

Kirk Hamilton and Marianne Fay
Climate change exacerbates the challenges of growth and development. Climate finance can provide the resources developing countries need to mitigate and adapt.

Viewpoint: Technology, Not Talks, Will Save the Planet

Bjørn Lomborg
Rather than trying to agree on elusive and ineffective carbon reduction targets, we should invest more heavily in new technology to fight climate change.

Modern Macroeconomics Is on the Wrong Track

William White
Former BIS chief economist and current chairman of the OECD’s Economic and Development Review Committee, William White argues that today's crisis—which is both real and financial—requires a new macroeconomic paradigm.

Rebalancing Growth in Asia

Eswar Prasad
With the increasing importance of Asian emerging markets in the world economy, rebalancing growth in developing Asia toward more reliance on domestic demand and less on exports is an important component of the global effort to stabilize the world economy.

Surviving the Third Wave

Hyun-Sung Khang
After the financial and economic crises, a “third wave” is engulfing the labor market, leaving millions without work and changing the course of their lives. F&D looks at the people likely to be hardest hit, and investigates how governments are responding.

Also in This Issue

Rebuilding U.S. Wealth

Evan Tanner and Yasser Abdih
Although the world is focusing on finding a replacement for the newly frugal U.S. consumer as an engine of demand, there is a related worry. Will those consumers save enough to restore their net worth to precrisis levels and support sustained capital investment?

Poverty, Disconnected

Ravi Kanbur
Are poverty statistics painting too rosy a picture? This article argues that there seems to be a disconnect between the seemingly good quantitative evidence that poverty is falling and the widespread concern that things have not really improved.

Fiscal Expansions: What Works

Emanuele Baldacci and Sanjeev Gupta
How governments choose to construct their taxing and spending policies makes a difference both to the duration of an economic recession and to the sustainability of the recovery after the downturn ends.

Choosing an Exchange Rate Regime

Atish R. Ghosh and Jonathan D. Ostry
Should countries fix their exchange rates, allow their currencies to float and let the market decide their value, or choose some approach between the two extremes? New IMF research sheds light on a longstanding question in international economics.

Too Big to Ignore

S. Raihan Zamil
Oversight of systemically important banks is a tricky proposition. Authorities must devise better regulations and supervision of these banks to forestall crises. And, if such an institution founders, they must decide how best to support it or let it fail.

Crisis Contained

Archana Kumar
As Asia tentatively makes its way out of the global economic crisis, the region—and the world—watches and learns from its resilient, though far from invulnerable, journey. Five leading Asian voices share their views on the region’s fragile rebound.

Departments

Letter from the Editor

Point-Counterpoint

Remittances in Development

Dilip Ratha, Ralph Chami, and Connel Fullenkamp
Two sides of an important question. Dilip Ratha argues that funds repatriated by migrant workers play an important role in economic development. Ralph Chami and Connel Fullenkamp say remittances are not a good solution to problems of poverty and development.

Podcast | PDF version

People in Economics

The People’s Professor

Prakash Loungani
Joseph Stiglitz has always taken the side of the “little guy,” and he won the Nobel prize in economics for research on how uneven information leads to unfair market outcomes. His career has spanned academia, U.S. policymaking, authoring a top seller, and even documentary film making.

Straight Talk

The Poor Should Not Pay the Price for the Crisis

Dame Barbara Stocking
The global economic crisis has heightened the vulnerability of many poor people in the developing world. How can the major players in the financial world—whose actions lie at the heart of the crisis—help pay for the damage?

Back to Basics

Why Countries Trade

Brad McDonald
International trade makes countries and the world better off, nearly all economists agree. But because there are winners and losers, trade can be a contentious political issue—both domestically and between governments.

Book Reviews

Fool’s Gold, Gillian Tett

Keynes: The Return of the Master, Robert Skidelsky

The Unexplored Keynes and Other Essays: A Socio-Economic Miscellany, Anand Chandavarkar

The Power of Freedom: Uniting Development and Human Rights, Jean-Pierre Chauffour

Data Spotlight

Inflation Drops to Negative Territory

Mick Silver and Kim Zieschang
The global crisis has caused inflation rates to fall almost everywhere, even becoming negative in the advanced economies.

Index of Articles in 2009

Index of Articles

Letters to the Editor

Francisco Vergara: Will American Unemployment Ever Start Falling?

Geoffrey J. Blanford: Response to "Viewpoint: Technology, not Talks, Will Save the Planet"

Write to us

F&D welcomes comments and brief letters, a selection of which are posted under Letters to the Editor. Letters may be edited. Please send your letters to fanddletters@imf.org

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