The countries comprising the Southern African Customs Union (SACU) are currently not very integrated into global value chains (GVCs), potentially missing out on important development opportunities. Accordingly, we explore high level options for promoting their integration. Given East Asia’s...

This paper analyses how the central bank's role in the monetary institutional setting can affect the unification process of the overall financial supervision architecture. Using indicators of monetary commitment and central bank independence, we claim that these legal proxies show an inverse...

Central bank independence (CBI) has attracted much attention in economics and politics in recent years. The concept is based on the political economy literature onmonetary policy. In this paper, we argue that CBI is an incomplete approximation to legal monetary commitment. We first discuss the...

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The TARGET2-system impedes economic recovery within the EMU. Hard budget constraints are a key to kick-start structural reforms in some EMU-member countries. However, the TARGET2-system is not only aggravating real misalignments but also softening budget constraints. The authors argue that the...

South Africa's trade barriers are still relatively high compared to other emerging market economies, and its industrial policy still preferentially treats certain industries. Based on a static GTAP model, we estimate the economic impact of further trade liberalization on the South African...

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The principal agent problem is one of the major issues of the credit rating agency market. Is it possible to solve the prevailing incentive problem of the market and contemporaneously satisfy the reputation demand of the investors? This paper presents an option for regulating the credit rating...

These days, plenty of cognoscenti in academia and politics share the common concern that the build-up of global macroeconomic imbalances threatens the international economy. While there is broad disagreement on the essence of what an imbalance exactly is, the term is generally associated with...

In recent years sub-Saharan Africa, notwithstanding the global financial crisis, has increased its share in global trade and investment flows. This has led to an appreciable improvement in development levels, albeit off a small base. However, these patterns are still dominated by commodity flows...