This paper discusses the major problem facing regional capital and credit markets in their relationship to regional development. There are two ways in which capital and credit markets play a crucial role in regional development: (1) they mobilize local savings resources and allocate them between...

Commodity price volatility in international markets has been used to justify numerous policy interventions, including the need for buffer stocks and counter-cyclical payments. The common measure of volatility, the standard deviation or coefficient of variation, likely overstates the actual...

This paper explores the emergence of large current account imbalances in a few large countries, the factors behind the emergence, the role of those imbalances in the financial crisis of 2008-09, and the implications of achieving global balance. Imbalances reflect a country’s net savings and...