The recent recovery in Latin America has been impressive but also raises the question whether this represents a fundamental break with the region''s history of boom-bust cycles. The paper traces how this history of macroeconomic volatility and financial crisis over the past century has adversely...

China's current account surplus has declined to around a quarter of its pre-crisis peak. While this is a major reduction in China's external imbalance, it has not been accompanied by a decisive shift toward consumption based growth. Instead, the compression in the external surplus has been...