The purpose of this paper is to cast a new light on the present state of global current account imbalances. As a first step, we compute the world distribution of current account balances, in order to highlight its historically-unprecedented pattern, both in terms of the size of imbalances, its...

This paper focuses on the contribution to recent narrowing of the gap between Northern and Southern economies in GDP/capita, shares in world trade and market capitalization attributable both jointly and single to China, India, and Brazil (the three currently largest rapidly growing Southern...

Using the product space and the index for product level sophistication, the performance of the Philippines' export basket is analyzed. Results indicate that while currently it has limited options for diversification, the country can still produce sophisticated exports given significant...

Information technologies play a very important role in modernizing Russia's economy and society as whole. Its competitive advantage lies in the availability of highly educated labour resources. Russia accounts for approximately 9% of researchers in the world as opposed to a share of about 0.3%...

Despite the fact that receipts from the provision of shipping services recorded on the Greek Balance of Payments represent nearly half of the total receipts of services rendered, the factors that determine them have not been explored for the Greek economy. Therefore, the main purpose of this...

This paper provides a framework to understand why a country might resort to a policy like an import ban when at risk from infectious disease outbreak overseas. Superior import-competing domestic production technologies, and over-reliance on taxing the public for government revenue, could lead to...

One of the most remarkable characteristics of the world economy today is the enormous, ever worsening US balance of payments current account deficit, which reached a record level of 5.7 p.c. of GDP in 2004. This has given rise to concerns in academic and political circles regarding the...

In the past few years, constant price increases have attracted much attention to commodity markets. The nominal prices of oil and most metals reached record levels, and their real prices reached the highest level in many years. The recent price surge was due mainly to a strong increase in demand...