The pressures on fiscal consolidation have mounted dramatically in the wake of the Greek and then the 'contagion' crisis which followed it (across the so-called 'weakest links' Portugal, Spain, Italy, Ireland). It led to the setting-up of the 750 billion euro stabilisation package widely seen as...

The current account surplus of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has drawn much foreign and domestic attention. This paper focuses on the reasons and remedies for the PRC’s current account surpluses. Rather than deploying the standard explanations, we argue that asymmetric market...

The current account surplus of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has drawn much foreign and domestic attention. This paper focuses on the reasons and remedies for the PRC’s current account surpluses. Rather than deploying the standard explanations, we argue that asymmetric...

The current account surplus of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has drawn much foreign and domestic attention. This paper focuses on the reasons and remedies for the PRC’s current account surpluses. Rather than deploying the standard explanations, we argue that asymmetric...

The recent developments in the euro area have shown how important it is that the various economic sectors pay attention to their financial positions. In the literature, the approach to analyse these positions is often partial, focusing on the government sector or just on the gross debt, as in...

The successful control of inflation and budget deficits has been a generalized trend among Latin America Countries (LAC) in the last two decades. However, this achievement has not mirrored in comparable advances in other economic and social areas in that period. Growth rates in these countries...

South Africa’s macroeconomic framework has served the economy well, but should be strengthened to make the economy more resilient to external shocks. Enhancing the credibility of the inflation target would provide the monetary authorities with more space for flexibility in the face of...

While the financial protection measures enacted by the ECB and the community of Eurozone members have calmed financial markets, they have left the competitiveness problem of the Eurozone’s southern countries and France unresolved. The paper compares price inflation before the crisis with the...

This paper argues that the global macroeconomy has been highly unstable. The combination of undervalued exchange rates in East Asia and the use by the US of monetary policy to ensure a steady growth led to an outcome in which interest rates fell a great deal. In the presence of a highly...

We examine the first widespread use of capital controls in response to a global or regional financial crisis. In particular, we analyze whether capital controls mitigated capital flight in the 1930s and assess their causal effects on macroeconomic recovery from the Great Depression. We find...