Browsing HKS Faculty Scholarship by Keyword "International Economics"
Now showing items 1-20 of 23
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AGOA Rules: The Intended and Unintended Consequences of Special Fabric Provisions
(John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, 2011)Lesotho and other least developed African countries responded impressively to the preferences they were granted under the African Growth and Opportunities Act with a rapid increase in their clothing exports to the US. But ... -
Can Leading Indicators Assess Country Vulnerability? Evidence from the 2008-09 Global Financial Crisis
(Elsevier, 2012)This paper investigates whether leading indicators can help explain the cross-country incidence of the 2008-09 financial crisis. Rather than looking for indicators with specific relevance to the current crisis, the selection ... -
Can Leading Indicators Assess Country Vulnerability? Evidence from the 2008-09 Global Financial Crisis
(John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, 2011)This paper investigates whether leading indicators can help explain the cross-country incidence of the 2008-09 financial crisis. Rather than looking for indicators with specific relevance to the current crisis, the selection ... -
A Comparison of Product Price Targeting and Other Monetary Anchor Options, for Commodity Exporters in Latin America
(John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, 2011)Seven possible nominal variables are considered as candidates to be the anchor or target for monetary policy. The context is countries in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), which tend to be price takers on world markets, ... -
Country Diversification, Product Ubiquity, and Economic Divergence
(John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, 2010)Countries differ markedly in the diversification of their exports. Products differ in the number of countries that export them, which we define as their ubiquity. We document a new stylized fact in the global pattern of ... -
Determinants of Agricultural and Mineral Commodity Prices
(John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, 2010)Prices of most agricultural and mineral commodities rose strongly in the past decade, peaking sharply in 2008. Popular explanations included strong global growth (especially from China and India), easy monetary policy (as ... -
Diagnostics Before Prescription
(American Economic Association, 2010)Development economists should stop acting as categorical advocates (or detractors) for specific approaches to development. They should instead be diagnosticians, helping decisionmakers choose the right model (and remedy) ... -
The Elasticity of Trust: How to Promote Trust in the Arab Middle East and the United States
(John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, 2010)To trust is to risk. When we lend someone money, we make ourselves vulnerable, hoping or expecting that the borrower will reward our trust and return the money at a later stage, possibly with interest or a reciprocal favor ... -
Empirical Confirmation of Creative Destruction from World Trade Data
(John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, 2012)We show that world trade network datasets contain empirical evidence that the dynamics of innovation in the world economy follows indeed the concept of creative destruction, as proposed by J.A. Schumpeter more than half a ... -
Environmental Effects of International Trade
(John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, 2009)The report surveys the state of our knowledge regarding the effects of trade on the environment. A central question is whether globalization helps or hurts in achieving the best tradeoff between environmental and economic ... -
The Forward Market in Emerging Currencies: Less Biased than in Major Currencies
(John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, 2009)Many studies have replicated the finding that the forward rate is a biased predictor of the future change in the spot exchange rate. Usually the forward discount actually points in the wrong direction. But, at least until ... -
Funding Economic Development: A Comparative Study of Financial Sector Reform in Vietnam and China
(United Nations Development Programme and Fulbright Economics Teaching Program, 2009)Although there is considerable debate among economists as to the impact of financial sector development on economic growth, empirical evidence indicates a strong, direct link between the two. A recent comprehensive review ... -
How Can Commodity Exporters Make Fiscal and Monetary Policy Less Procyclical?
(John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, 2011)Fiscal and monetary policy each has a role to play in mitigating the volatility that stems from the large trade shocks hitting commodity-exporting countries. All too often macroeconomic policy is procyclical, that is, ... -
How Good Politics Results in Bad Policy: The Case of Biofuel Mandates
(John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, 2010)Biofuels have become big policy and big business. Government targets, mandates, and blending quotas have created a growing demand for biofuels. Some say that the U.S. biofuels industry was created by government policies. ... -
Isomorphism and the Limits to African Public Financial Management Reform
(2009)Many reform results fall below expectations in the development arena, especially in the public sector. Do the reforms just need more time to work better, or should we adjust our expectations? In addressing this question, ... -
A Lesson From the South for Fiscal Policy in the US and Other Advanced Countries
(John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, 2011)American fiscal policy has been procyclical: Washington wasted the expansion period 2001-2007 by running budget deficits, but by 2011 had come to feel constrained by inherited debt to withdraw fiscal stimulus. Chile has ... -
Making Room for China in the World Economy
(American Economic Association, 2010) -
Monetary Policy in Emerging Markets: A Survey
(John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, 2011)The characteristics that distinguish most developing countries, compared to large industrialized countries, include: greater exposure to supply shocks in general and trade volatility in particular, procyclicality of both ... -
On Global Currencies
(John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, 2009)I approach the state of global currency issues by identifying eight concepts that I see as having recently “peaked” and eight more that I see as currently rising in relevance. Those that I see as having already seen their ... -
On Graduation from Fiscal Procyclicality
(John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, 2012)In the past, industrial countries have tended to pursue countercyclical or, at worst, acyclical fiscal policy. In sharp contrast, emerging and developing countries have followed procyclical fiscal policy, thus exacerbating ...