This working paper aims to take stock of global efforts towards financial reform since the start of the financial crisis in 2007–08 and to provide a synthetic (if simplified) picture of their status as of January 2012. Underlying dynamics are described and analyzed both at the global level...

Although the United States and the European Union were both seriously impacted by the financial crisis of 2007, resulting policy debates and regulatory responses have differed considerably on the two sides of the Atlantic. In this paper the authors examine the debates on the problem posed by...

Japan faces significant challenges in encouraging innovation and entrepreneurship. Attempts to formally model past industrial policy interventions uniformly uncover little, if any, positive impact on productivity, growth, or welfare. The evidence indicates that most resource flows went to large,...

After the recent IT bubble, Germany alone among OECD countries is beginning to share Japan's political-economic profile: too many banks with too little capital, macroeconomic policy division and deflationary bias, and financially and politically passive households. Germany has been spared...

South Korea's experience is unparalleled in its combination of sustained prosperity, capital controls, and financial crisis. Over several decades, South Korea experienced rapid sustained growth in the presence of capital controls. These controls and the de-linking of domestic and international...

This paper documents an unusual and possibly significant phenomenon: the export of skills embodied in goods, services, or capital from poorer to richer countries. We first present a set of stylized facts. Using a measure that combines the sophistication of a country’s exports with the average...

The Doha Round is the longest-running trade liberalization negotiation in the postwar era. Despite its longevity, the end is not yet in sight as parties disagree on the depth of liberalization necessary in agriculture and nonagricultural market access (NAMA). This rift is prolonging the Round's...

Prima facie, competitiveness adjustments in the eurozone, based on unit labor cost developments, appear sensible and in line with what the economic analyst might have predicted and the economic doctor might have ordered. But a broader and arguably better--Balassa-Samuelson-Penn (BSP)--framework...

Latin American performance during the global financial crisis was unprecedented. Many developing and emerging countries successfully weathered the worst crisis since the Great Depression. Was it good luck? Was it good policies? In this paper we compare growth during the Asian and global...

Multinational corporations account for 80 percent of all transfers of goods and services across borders, either within their own affiliate transactions or through networks with independent providers. As a result, the term supply chains is rapidly becoming the new norm in discussing the spread of...