Latin America’s bold fiscal policy reaction to the global financial crisis was hailed as a sign that the region had finally overcome its procyclical fiscal past. However, most countries of the region have not yet rebuilt their fiscal space, despite buoyant commodity revenues and relatively strong growth in the aftermath of the crisis. Using the experience of Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, and Uruguay, this paper examines the lessons and legacies of the crisis by addressing the foll...

The key policy challenge for Turkey in the years ahead will be to enhance and consolidate the advances made since the nation’s 2000-01 economic crisis. Higher growth could reduce unemployment and raise living standards toward European Union levels. This paper reviews Turkey’s policy performance in terms of growth, inflation, debt, fiscal and financial sector reform, and labor markets. The analysis assesses the effectiveness of macroeconomic stabilization and structural reforms since the cr...

Everyone's Been Asking – What is Bitcoin?Learn the Ins and Outs of Bitcoin, the elusive new currency, including Bitcoin Mining, how to buy, sell and invest, and how you can achieve long term profits!Bitcoin has been brooding within the tech community over the last few years. However, within the past few months, Bitcoin has exploded into the mainstream and is being covered in every notable new source with commentary almost everyday.What is this mysterious currency?

A Federal Reserve insider pulls back the curtain on the secretive institution that controls America’s economyAfter correctly predicting the housing crash of 2008 and quitting her high-ranking Wall Street job, Danielle DiMartino Booth was surprised to find herself recruited as an analyst at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, one of the regional centers of our complicated and widely misunderstood Federal Reserve System. She was shocked to discover just how much tunn...

Economics has the capacity to offer us deep insights into some of the most formidable problems of life, and offer solutions to them too. Combining a global approach with examples from everyday life, Partha Dasgupta describes the lives of two children who live very different lives in different parts of the world: in the Mid-West USA and in Ethiopia. He compares the obstacles facing them, and the processes that shape their lives, their families, and their futures. He shows how economics unco...

'The Money Bomb' was launched on the morning of the Chancellor's Budget in April 1983 and although it was featured in the 1st Edition of the London Evening Standard, by the time the second edition was on the streets, the article on the 'Money Bomb' had been pulled. Similarly, orders taken earlier that day from retailers were mysteriously then cancelled.Clearly 'The Money Bomb' had hit a raw nerve with the authorities and the assumption is that the powers that be, must have felt it ...

Corruption is the cancer at the heart of many of the world’s problems. It destroys jobs and holds back growth. It fuels instability and terrorism. It traps the poorest in poverty. It even corrodes trust in the sports we love.In this collection of essays leading politicians, activists, journalists and academics begin a global debate about how we can fight back.Foreword by David Cameron, Prime Minister of the United KingdomContributors include:Christine Lagard...

This book examines the theory and practice of performance budgeting, which aims to link the funding of government agencies to the results they deliver to improve the efficiency of public spending. In a combination of thematic studies and case studies, it clearly presents the diverse range of contemporary performance budgeting models and examines their effectiveness. Its coverage is truly international, spanning developed, developing, and middle-income countries. Reflecting this, its case s...

Recent years have witnessed an increase in the frequency of currency and balance of payments crises in developing countries. More important, the crises have become more virulent, have caused widespread disruption to other developing countries, and have even had repercussions on advanced economies. To predict crises, their causes must be clearly understood. Two competing strands of theories are reviewed in this paper. The first focuses on the consequences of such policies as excessive credit g...

Unwritten rules of Wall Street--what works, what doesn't, and how investors can tell the difference. Investing is governed by unofficial rules, passed to investors through brokers, the financial press, and even fellow investorsFor more than a decade, in two previous editions, Stock Market Rules has helped investors separate the most valuable of these maxims from the meaningless and even potentially harmful. But with recent market turbulence and scandals blindsiding...

The recent financial crisis has demonstrated the dangers of ignoring the factors that led to previous crises, and the effectiveness of the policies designed to deal with them. Over time, these macroeconomic policies have evolved, oscillating between state intervention and a free-market approach. Following a story that runs from the pre-Great Depression era up until the Financial Crisis of 2007–11, this book reveals an intimate connection between new macroeconomic ideas and policies and the...