Advanced degree in economics (preferably a Ph.D.) with specialization in one or more of the following fields (agricultural, energy or environmental economics, CGE modeling, micro-simulation techniques, macro modeling)
Experience with CGE modeling, GAMS and/or Stata
Last week’s victory by President Elect Barack Obama unleashed a global groundswell of positive vibes. Most of the emotional outpouring was directed at the striking achievement of this U.S. election, but it might as well have been a moving tribute to the powerful advances in social engagement marketing, as deployed by Obama’s campaign.
Beginning with his February 2007 meeting with Netscape founder and Facebook board member Marc Andreessen, Obama has displayed an impressive ability to harness the forces of burgeoning new social media. Quite remarkable, because Facebook, Twitter and YouTube were barely a glimmer in their founders’ eyes during the 2004 election.
'We may have the first decline in trade since 1982 next year, and in many parts of the world, remittances are also drying up,” warned last month World Bank President Robert Zoellick just ahead of the G20 Summit in Washington D.C. “The most vulnerable in society, as always, are the ones at most risk.”
World trade has been an engine of the world economy, with developing countries posting nearly 8 percent growth and attracting a record $1 trillion in net private capital flows in 2007. But in 2009, world trade could decline for the first time since the eighties. The global economy is forecast to grow by only 1 percent, with developing country growth expected to fall to 4.5 percent from a previously projected 6.5 percent. The World Bank estimates each 1 percent drop in growth could trap another 20 million people in poverty.
“World trade, an engine of the world economy, is now dropping due to falling global demand and lack of trade credit,” said Danny Leipziger, World Bank’s Vice President for Poverty Reduction and Economic Management. “If you can’t get financing to ship your goods, exports will slow down and worsen the economic climate.”
Korean household debt has reached 148 percent of disposable income, high by emerging market standards.
The debt of the Korean households reached 82 percent of GDP in 2007
# The work force will be cut by 3,000 employees, about 600 through layoffs and the remainder through attrition.
# The Police Department’s peak headcount will be reduced by 1,000, and the Police Academy class planned for January 2009 will be canceled. A July 2009 Police Academy class, which will graduate 2,000 new officers, is still planned.
# Nighttime shifts will be eliminated at five engine companies in firehouses where ladder companies will remain fully staffed. The firefighting training academy for probationary firefighters will be reduced from 23 weeks to 18 weeks.
# The city’s contribution to the Department of Education budget will be reduced by $181 million this year and $385 million next year. The cuts include the elimination of 475 positions.
# The mayor’s office will be reduced by 10 percent through attrition.
# The city will save $20 million on city vehicles through various administrative means.
# The city’s Administration for Children’s Services will reduce the number of child protective supervisor positions by 127.
# Subsidies to libraries and cultural institutions will be cut by 2.5 percent this year and 5 percent next year — amounting to an $11 million reduction in city funds for cultural institutions and the reduction of average library hours from 6 days to 5.5 days per week.
America and Britain have the most developed financial systems in the world, according to the World Economic Forum, a think-tank. Its inaugural Financial Development Report ranks 52 countries according to the strength of their financial markets, and the depth and breadth of access to capital and financial services. This wide-ranging index takes into account the quality of each country’s financial laws and regulations, its business environment, and the likelihood of a financial crisis, among other things. Rich countries scored well, whereas Latin America and Eastern Europe did poorly. Most countries had uneven performance: only Germany, America and Britain scored well across all categories.
The issue of financial stability is an important one that I flesh out in more detail in a chapter of the report titled “Financial Crises, Financial Stability, and Reform: Supervision and Regulation of the Financial System in a World of Financial Globalization”. This chapter analyzes in detail the episodes of financial crisis in emerging market economies and advanced economy; discusses the causes and consequences of such crisis; measures the economic and fiscal costs of such crises; discusses the debate on whether monetary and credit policy should target asset prices and asset bubbles; studies the weaknesses of financial regulation and supervision in advanced economies financial systems that led to the recent crises; and finally considers eleven separate key issues in the reform of the regulation and supervision of financial institutions in a world of financial globalization that are necessary to prevent future crisis and make them less virulent.
The eleven issues that are key in reforming financial regulation and supervision are: the distorted compensation system of bankers/traders and the related agency problems between financial institutions shareholders and their managers; the flaws of the originate and distribute securitization model; regulatory arbitrage and the instability of the shadow banking system given its reliance on short term liquid financing, high leverage and long term illiquid lending; the weaknesses of self-regulation and market discipline and the need of greater rules-based regulation; pro-cyclical capital requirements and other issues with the Basel II capital requirements; the distorted incentives of credit rating agencies; asset valuation and fair value accounting in a world where assets can be highly illiquid and hard to price; the lack of transparency in financial markets; the inadequate regulatory regime; the lack of international coordination of regulatory policies; and the issue of who will regulate the regulators, i.e. how to avoid the regulatory capture by the financial industry of the regulators and supervisors of financial institutions.
The paradox of the US and UK being ranked top at a time when there is significant turmoil, weakness and vulnerabilities in their financial systems can be explained as follows:
There is a tradeoff between greater financial innovation (that is beneficial to develop more sophisticated financial instruments allow better allocation of savings to investment and better risk diversification) and financial risk and instability that may increase if such innovation does not occur in the appropriate regulatory and supervisory regime. A country may be very financial stable with little risk of a financial/banking crisis but if this stability is the result of excessive regulation that foster little financial innovation, little competition and efficiency in financial markets and institution such financial stability will come at the cost of poorer financial intermediation that is not beneficial to long term economic growth and performance. So, excessively stable financial regimes are not necessarily ideal. Conversely, if financial innovation is excessive and occurs in a weak regulatory framework financial markets may be much more sophisticated but the risk of instability is also greater.
Summary: This paper examines the country-level dynamics of long-run growth in Africa between 1975 and 2005. The authors examine how growth has affected mobility and the distribution of income among countries. They analyze changes in cross-country income structure and convergence, and look for evidence of the formation of country groups or "clubs." Using a novel method of breaking up the growth histories of African economies into medium-term spells of growth accelerations and declines, the authors investigate whether a group of African "leopards" - the regional equivalent of Asia's "tigers" - is beginning to emerge.
Argentina’s overdue loans from the Paris Club nations, principally Japan and Germany, have represented a serious obstacle to its medium-term growth potential. While the country was in arrears, the export-promotion agencies of many foreign governments were banned from providing subsidised credit for sales or investments in Argentina. Now, it will be eligible for such loans, substantially lowering financing and insurance costs for infrastructure projects and imports of capital goods. In particular, the move should expedite the construction of a high-speed rail line linking the country’s three largest cities, a costly project of questionable necessity strongly backed by Ms Fernández. “We haven’t been getting big investments of hundreds of millions of dollars because they need international financing,” says Beatriz Nofal, the president of the government’s investment-promotion agency. “Now they’ll start coming.”
But the mechanism Ms Fernández has chosen for repaying the debts is reinforcing widely held concerns about Argentina’s economic management. Just as her husband did when repaying the government’s debt with the IMF in 2005, Ms Fernández has rustled up the cash by helping herself to 15% of the central bank’s foreign-currency reserves. In addition to highlighting the bank’s tenuous independence, this decision implies a steep opportunity cost: Argentina could easily have paid the debt in instalments rather than in one lump sum. Doing so might have spared the country the need to borrow ever-greater sums from the Venezuelan government, which now charges a daunting 15% interest rate.
But according to the Paris Club’s rules, securing any such restructuring with the group would require the blessing of the IMF, which has long been the Kirchners’ favourite political scapegoat. And in turn, to obtain the Fund’s approval, Argentina would probably have had to reveal how it calculates its official inflation figure, which is manipulated so that it hovers at around a third of the true rate. Ms Fernández remains unwilling to reveal precisely how her officials doctor Argentina’s economic statistics.
If Ms Fernández hoped that her decision would calm investors’ nerves, she appears to have been mistaken: the spread between the interest rates on Argentina’s bonds and US Treasury notes actually increased on the day she made the announcement. The markets remain jittery because Argentina’s unpaid obligations to the Paris Club were in fact among the least of its worries. The government still refuses to negotiate with the private holders of $20 billion of its bonds who held out against the country’s harsh debt restructuring in 2005, a decision that prevents it from borrowing on the international capital markets. It continues to impose strict price controls and hand out lavish energy and transport subsidies. And it suffers from a yawning credibility gap, due to lies about the inflation rate
