This paper focuses on some of the macroeconomic risks that lie ahead for Latin America. The discussion is informed by my work on crises and capital flows and their macroeconomic consequences. The trends and initial conditions that allowed the region to weather the global economic storm of...

In this note, we attempt to place the question of how we got to the global financial crisis that began as the US Subprime debacle in the summer of 2007 in the context of an international and historical comparative setting. It is of some poignancy that the “we” here refers to the wealthiest...

The standard pattern: capital flows into the new “hot” nation, but then stop or reverses forcing painful adjustment. This column presents research based on such episodes from 181 nations during 1980-2007 and for a subset of 66 nations for the 1960-2007 period. If the pattern of the past few...

We highlight in this note how an application of a similar estimation approach as ours to Colombian data for a more recent period following financial and capital account liberalization may find that the money supply is "endogenous" (i.e. demand-determined as long as the exchange rate is heavily...

Financial crises are historically associated with the “4 deadly D’s”: Sharp economic downturns follow banking crises; with government revenues dragged down, fiscal deficits worsen; deficits lead to debt; as debt piles up rating downgrades follow. For the most fortunate countries, the...

It has been said that insurance is the last of the financial services to accept radical change (Denney [1995-1996]). Yet there has been a fundamental shift in the geographic location and in the organization of the reinsurance industry in the last six years (Chichilnisky [19966]). Global...

This paper has addressed the following questions: Do sovereign credit ratings systematically help predict currency and banking crises? If not, why not? What needs to change? What is the behavior of credit ratings following the crises? Are there important differences in the behavior of credit...

In 1979, when anthropometric history was still in its infancy, Robert Fogel and collaborators reported that the height of the US male white population began to decline quite unexpectedly around the birth cohorts of 1830. This was quite a conundrum on account of the fact that according to...

The paper summarizes - from the point of view of management sciences - institutional factors that matter for conducting the policy of support for business succession by member states in the European Union. Describing challenges for family business in Europe is the entering point for the...

Almost a decade after their initiation, financial reforms appear to have had little effect on the economies of Sub-Sahara Africa. Whether the blame is to fall on their initial design itself, or on the partial nature of their implementation, liberalization policies have not mobilized savings,...