While China shared many systemic, initial conditions with the transition economies of Central-East Europe (CEE) and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), it had a more agricultural economy and a more stable political-economic system than many CEE and CIS countries. Unlike most of the CEE...

We compare the duration and performance of different monetary regimes, especially the contrast between countries those that fix exchange rates and those that target inflation. Inflation targeting is a more durable policy; no country has yet been forced to abandon an inflation target, while many...

This lecture revisits the evidence on the incidence and severity of different varieties of financial crises within the context of globalization then (pre-1914) and now (1980 to the present). I then discuss the determinants of emerging market crises from the perspective of the recent balance...

Why are we rich and others poor? What is preventing the less-developed countries from catching up with the more developed? How did we become rich? Underlying these questions are more fundamental ones: What is the nature of economic progress? What are its causes? I seek the answers to these...

This book stems from work by the author published in Energy Economics, the International Journal of Exergy and follow-up working papers and a previous book Thermoeconomics. Topics covered include entropy processes in the world, a history of human development, the distribution of income, first...

This third edition of the book stems from work by the author published in Energy Economics, the International Journal of Exergy and follow-up working papers. Topics covered include the gas laws, the distribution of income, first and second laws of thermodynamics, economic processes, elasticity,...

The IMF’s most recent World Economic Outlook (WEO), published last week, projects world economic growth will slow, from 4.8 percent in 2010 to 4.2 percent next year. Throughout the report, there are numerous concerns expressed about the “fragility” of the global economic recovery. The...

The Black Sea region comprises a heterogeneous group of countries Bulgaria, Romania, Ukraine, Russia, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Turkey. Their economies differ in their size, institutional characteristics and integration perspectives, are facing vastly different problems, and find...

This paper is part of a discussion between CEPR and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) regarding CEPR’s paper, “IMF-Supported Macroeconomic Policies and the World Recession: A Look at Forty-One Borrowing Countries.” An IMF representative presented a response to that paper at an October...