Together with many policymakers and economists, I see in the 1990s expansion signs that new technologies that had been emerging for some time were finally paying off in stronger economic performance. I will use the expression 'new economy' to describe this period, although I recognize the...

In the first decade of the 21st century the International Monetary Fund (IMF) faced crises of legitimacy, relevance, and budgetary finance. It now confronts what likely will be the worst global recession since World War II, potentially huge demands for its financial assistance with limited...

When the risk premium in the US stock market fell far below its historic level, Shiller (2000) attributed this to a bubble driven by psychological factors. As an alternative explanation, we point out that the observed risk premium may be reduced by one-sided intervention policy on the part of...

In recent years, academic economists have come to appreciate the centrality of public institutions in contributing to economic performance. Yet Korea, arguably the premier success story of the last half-century, has sometimes been described as a First World economy with Third World institutions....

This paper argues that the way in which China is portrayed in the revived Bretton Woods thesis (BW2) is not consistent with several important trends in, and features of, the Chinese economy; nor does the strategy in the BW2 seem sensible for China's long-term economic development. Whether it is...

Since 2010, Myanmar has been in the midst of a multifaceted transition, involving economic reforms, the resolution of multiple long-standing civil conflicts, and a nascent transition to democratic rule. These transitions are coinciding with a resource-led economic boom. Hendrix and Noland assess...

Much of the conventional wisdom concerning social spending is faulty, especially in the United States. Analyses typically focus on readily available information about direct government social expenditures and overlook how tax systems and private spending affect the level of social spending in...

This paper introduces a new probabilistic approach to sovereign debt projections and presents new estimates of debt ratios through 2020 for Italy and Spain. The new approach takes account of likely correlations across 243 alternative scenarios with three states (good, baseline, bad) for five key...

This working paper maps out the structure and value chains of the wind industry, analyzes the wind industry's increasing global integration via cross-border trade and investment flows, and offers recommendations to policymakers for the design of investment and trade policies to help realize wind...

We study a dynamic model in which the interaction between debt accumulation and asset prices magnifies credit booms and busts. We find that borrowers do not internalize these feedback effects and therefore suffer from excessively large booms and busts in both credit flows and asset prices. We...