Concerns about corporate governance standards have often centred on emerging markets, notably after the 1997-98 Asian crisis. A series of corporate scandals have now raised investor concerns over the quality of earnings and opaque balance sheet structures in the US and other developed countries....

Over recent years, a number of emerging creditors have increased their aid and lending to Africa’s Low-Income Countries (LICs). This has fed worries that new official lenders may be undoing years of international efforts to rein in over-indebtedness in Africa, to reduce the continent’s...

Investment in most heavily indebted countries has been weak since 1982. The widely accepted debt overhang proposition interprets the investment drop as a moral hazard problem: a heavy debt burden raises the incentive to consume, because the marginal benefit of investment would go to the...

Large current account deficits are often assumed to play an important role in the propagation of financial crises in emerging markets in receipt of heavy private capital inflows. This paper reaches some major conclusions. <I>First</I>, the Lawson Doctrine — according to which current account deficits...</i>

How and to what extent can a high degree of global financial integration help the fast-ageing OECD benefit from the delayed ageing process in the non-OECD area? The question is being raised with increasing urgency as it is slowly understood that even fully funded pension schemes will not escape...

The so-called “accession economies” preparing to enter the European Union are experiencing increased inward capital flows based upon positive interest spreads and expectations of currency appreciation. While the authorities of these countries have tried to manage these flows and to prevent...

The present level of ODA falls short of the amount needed to finance the <I>Millennium Development Goals</I> (MDGs). The figure of additional $50 billion per year, roughly the present total of ODA spent by DAC donors, is often quoted (e.g. by the Zedillo Report); it results from the sum of the fight...</i>

Discussions on how best to exit from global imbalances to create a more balanced world economy have ignored the impact on poor countries of proposals to redress these imbalances. This paper aims at filling that gap. It gauges the degree of renminbi (RMB) undervaluation; presents evidence on RMB...

• Le repli massif des capitaux étrangers investis en Asie — plus de 10 pour cent du PIB des pays en crise — les place devant un problème de transfert. Pour favoriser la relance en Asie, les pays créanciers devraient impliquer leurs banques domestiques dans les opérations de sauvetage...

• Le vieillissement rapide des populations dans les pays riches va sans doute entraîner une forte croissance des régimes de retraite privés par capitalisation, lesquels pourraient offrir d’énormes moyens de financement aux pays en développement. • Les gestionnaires des fonds de...