Main description: Economists make confident assertions in op-ed columns and on cable news—so why are their explanations at odds with equally confident assertions from other economists? And why are all economic predictions so rarely borne out? Harnessing his frustration with this contradiction,...

The authors conduct an econometric analysis of the economic and social factors which contributed to the spread of violent conflict in Nepal. They find that conflict intensity is significantly higher in places with greater poverty and lower levels of economic development. Violence is higher in...

This paper describes the key challenges to job creation in conflict-affected environments in South Asia. It uses household survey data since the early 2000s for Afghanistan, India, Nepal, and Sri Lanka to document the characteristics of labor markets in conflict-affected areas, exploiting the...

The International Monetary Fund was dismissed as almost irrelevant to the global economy, but during the 2008 financial crisis, it returned to center stage, providing financial rescues for developing countries

GUIDES is an easily remembered framework that can help the business leader and student to confidently and quickly identify, organize, and interpret a country's key economic indicators. Alternatively, it can help them to evaluate third-party analyses and to compare such analyses across countries....

In the summer of 1992, hedge fund manager George Soros was contemplating the possibility that the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) would break down. Designed to pave the way for a full-scale European Monetary Union, the ERM was a system of fixed exchange rates linking together twelve...

GUIDESlines provides benchmark values of the key economic indicators identified in the GUIDES framework for both developed countries (the OECD) and fast-growing emerging markets (the BRINCS countries).Learning Objective: Help students analyze and interpret macroeconomic data

After its 2009-2010 fiscal crisis shook the euro, could the Greek government stabilize debt, avoid default, and stay on the euro? This case looks at the Greek social and political road to fiscal crisis; the economics of that crisis and efforts to recover from it; the danger the crisis posed to...