IG

cigionline.org | June 16, 2015

The Greek debt talks have broken down. The IMF has withdrawn from negotiations and IMF Chief Economist Olivier Blanchard has a blog post, here, explaining the Fund’s position.The outlook is bleak. The Fund is struggling to strike the right balance in terms of incentives: balancing the desire to promote timely, orderly restructuring with the need to minimize risk of market turbulence.Access to Fund resources is a potential catalyst to restructuring, but also poses a moral hazard threat that...

cigionline.org | June 09, 2015

Policy fads can be as fickle as fashion trends. Many years ago, industrial policy was all the rage. Proponents argued that "strategic" interventions in key industries could foster development and spur growth. Japan, with its mighty Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) was held up as a model. And books with titles such as "Japan as Number One" warned ominously that countries failing to identify and support strategic sectors would risk falling progressively behin...

cigionline.org | May 07, 2014

As evidence of rising greenhouse gas emissions accumulates (see the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, here), a new controversy has erupted. Robert Stavins, an influential advisor to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and professor at Harvard, complains that the report had been substantially redacted to make it more palatable to member governments.Sovereign governments intervened to soften passages inconsistent with their respective positions and nati...

None | March 27, 2014

Ok, so, here is the problem worrying some: Behind the encouraging headlines of somewhat stronger growth in the advanced economies, Larry Summers worries that the North Atlantic economy �� think: old Europe and the New World of Canada and the U.S., with Japan thrown in for good measure — is at risk of secular stagnation, perpetually trapped in a low-growth environment; meanwhile, the IMF frets that Europe is flirting with deflation, China is slowing as conditional convergence suggests it eventuall...