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This Asian country has the most ‘complex’ economy in the world
Monday 2nd of December 2019
Countries ranked by their economic complexity
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Why are 800 women dying every day to poor childbirth conditions?
Friday 29th of November 2019
Countries need about $264 billion – the equivalent cost of 110 military aircraft – to end maternal deaths, gender based violence, child marriage, and provide family planning to all women by 2030, said a United Nations study.
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Is Black Friday a dark day for the planet? This growing movement thinks so
Friday 29th of November 2019
What is the true cost of a good deal? Black Friday bargains may not be as cheap as you think, according to one advocacy group – urging shoppers to rethink how, what and why they buy.Comprising more than 300 retail brands, the Make Friday Green Again collective is shunning the annual November shopping day for environmental reasons, and is asking the global public to do the same.
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These are the UK’s biggest trading partners
Friday 22nd of November 2019
Almost half the UK’s exports went to European Union member states in 2018 – 45%, to be exact, totalling some $372.5 billion. Taken as a whole, the EU dominates the UK’s global trading partnerships, accounting for substantially more than the next-biggest single country the UK trades with.
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All the way to the top: Industrial policy, innovation, and sustained growth
Wednesday 20th of November 2019
The odds of poor or middle-income countries achieving the stardom of the “Asian Miracles” within a generation or two, or even three, are small. Between 1960 and 2014, only 16 developing economies worldwide were able to vault into high-income status, and many of those were fortunate enough to have discovered oil or join the European Union.
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Why ignoring women is costing financial services money
Friday 15th of November 2019
Over the last 10 years, achieving gender balance in financial services has remained a challenge across Europe and worldwide, with the industry still male-dominated, particularly at senior level. While there are now more women in senior leadership roles globally than ever before, progress has been incremental, and there is still a long way to go – something made clear by the new Women in Financial Services Report 2020 from management consultancy Oliver Wyman. Increasingly, this lack of gender balance is to the industry’s commercial detriment.
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How the Western Balkans can keep its economic momentum
Friday 8th of November 2019
The EU decided last month not to open membership talks with Albania and North Macedonia just yet and a broader discussion on the future of the EU is ongoing. But there is positive economic momentum in the Western Balkans, with more foreign investment coming in, and it needs to be maintained.
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This is what you need to know about the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership
Wednesday 6th of November 2019
Although India pulled out at the last minute, China and 14 other countries agreed in Bangkok this week on plans for what could become the world’s biggest trade agreement – the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP).
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Why trade wars have no winners
Friday 1st of November 2019
Public support for free trade is shrinking and the long-standing political consensus that trade liberalization is beneficial is under attack. The US in particular has recently shifted towards protectionism by imposing tariffs and continuously threatening its largest trading partners, in particular the EU and China. Brexit, too, is partly driven by a protectionist attitude: although the UK intends to enter into Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) with other countries, the move away from the single market is itself a rejection of free trade within the EU.
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Has monetary policy reached its limits?
Friday 1st of November 2019
A mood of foreboding dominated this month’s annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank in Washington, DC. But fear of a global recession was not the real cause. Although the latest update of the IMF’s World Economic Outlook showed economic activity slowing this year to its weakest level since 2009, the projected global growth rate of 3% is still far above levels associated with past recessions and would be consistent with decent economic conditions in most parts of the world – not a bad outcome for the 11th year of a sustained global expansion. And for next year, the IMF predicts that growth will accelerate to 3.4%, very close to the 3.6% estimate of the world economy’s long-run sustainable trend.
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Exploring the anti-globalization bias and the public policy it creates
Wednesday 30th of October 2019
Although much of the globalization debate focuses on the uneven impact of open trade, three other inherent anti-globalization biases are at work in many societies. These often contribute to the emergence of misguided public policies that benefit neither employers nor workers.
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Brexit uncertainty is taking a toll on the British economy
Thursday 24th of October 2019
Uncertainty is associated with reduced investment and lower productivity, with particularly large effects at highly productive firms most exposed to EU trade.
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Tariffs and monetary policy: A toxic mix
Monday 21st of October 2019
The history of tariffs and immigration and capital barriers provides clear lessons of the potentially sizeable economic costs of anti-globalisation policies. This column describes how the US-China tariff war and policy-related uncertainties are harming economic performance, and are also distorting the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy and undermining its credibility and independence. Tariffs and discretionary monetary policy are a toxic mix, and the authors encourage a de-escalation of burdensome barriers to trade and urge the Fed to adopt a systematic, rules-based approach to monetary policy.
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These are the United States’ most exported products
Tuesday 15th of October 2019
Silicon Valley may be the tech capital of the world but physical goods still account for around two-thirds of US exports, new figures show.
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In the digital era, tax, trade and competition rules need an upgrade
Friday 11th of October 2019
The benefits of digitalization are clear and welcome. Yet popular debate is growing worldwide on how best to tax and regulate digital businesses to optimize economic and societal outcomes. Because digital activities are so often borderless, actions taken in one country can spill over into others. These actions heavily influence the trade and investment decisions of many businesses, but all the more for those with geographically mobile digital footprints. Let’s look at six live areas of debate.
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A 2017 WTO deal aimed to improve trade in Africa – but there’s still much work to do
Wednesday 9th of October 2019
With the United States and China locked in a trade war, climate action lagging behind climate reality, and the World Trade Organization’s Appellate Body at risk of becoming inoperable, the theme of this week’s WTO public forum – “Trading Forward: Adapting to a Changing World” – couldn’t be more appropriate. But if the global trading system is to be adapted to twenty-first-century realities, careful attention must be paid to the needs of developing countries.
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2 spaces need filling on the ECB Executive Board – who’s in the running?
Tuesday 8th of October 2019
Eurozone governments will soon have to fill two open slots on the European Central Bank’s Executive Board. Rather than proposing candidates who will forcefully promote national views, they should consider nominees who are likely to be able to influence ECB policy.
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Why retail could be the barrier to an India-US trade deal
Friday 4th of October 2019
The relationship between India and the United States has been described as one of the most important of the 21st century.
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4 ways climate change is opening the Arctic up for business
Friday 27th of September 2019
This picture of a dog sled in Greenland went viral around the globe.
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The ‘new’ economics of trade agreements
Tuesday 24th of September 2019
Negotiations at the multilateral, regional and bilateral levels have been remarkably successful at reducing traditional barriers to international trade in the post-war period (Bown and Crowley 2016). With this success, the trade community has shifted its attention to various non-tariff barriers that leave world markets still far from integrated. Among the non-tariff barriers that receive the most scrutiny are impediments to trade that arise from differences in domestic regulations, or what Sykes (1999a, 1999b) has termed “regulatory heterogeneity”.
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China is leading the world in sustainable development
Tuesday 24th of September 2019
To its credit, China is focusing on sustainable development at a point when its per capita output is barely more than one-third the level in the so-called advanced economies. A relatively poor country has made a conscious choice to shift its focus from the quantity of economic growth to its quality.
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It’s time to bring together global trade and climate action and let them help each other
Monday 23rd of September 2019
It has been four years since the Paris Accord was agreed, and the world’s climate change strategy needs a new infusion of energy (pardon the pun). The plans submitted by countries to the UN – the nationally determined contributions (NDCs) – do not sum1 to anywhere near the level of ambition required to achieve the Accord’s 2˚C target, let alone the 1.5˚C goal the IPCC has recommended is most appropriate (IPCC 2018).
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What can Euroscepticism teach the world?
Monday 23rd of September 2019
Recent successes of populist movements in Europe might seem to reflect eroded trust in the EU’s institutions. This column asks what global lessons can be drawn from recent research on Euroscepticism at the ECB and elsewhere. It argues that taking citizens’ concerns seriously and addressing salient issues, building on a sense of togetherness, and caring about public trust should inspire a course of action at the global level. Insufficient progress along these dimensions has played a key role not only in Brexit, but also in the backlash against the multilateral world order underpinning globalisation.
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Services are the hidden side of the US-China trade war
Friday 20th of September 2019
Discussions about the trade war between the United States and China have largely focused on goods. This is not surprising, given that tariffs have been the most visible weapon in this war. Tariffs apply to goods, not services – hence the focus on products. However, that misses a big, or maybe the biggest, part of the picture.
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Trade uncertainty has risen at an alarming rate. This is why
Wednesday 18th of September 2019
Tariff hikes, tariff threats, and tariff retaliations have become a major source of economic uncertainty, stock market volatility and concerns about the global outlook (e.g. Blanchard 2019, Crowley 2019, Evenett and Fritz 2019, Fajgelbaum et al. 2019, Jacks and Novy 2019). This column draws on three initiatives that aim to quantify the rise in trade policy uncertainty and its role in stock market volatility.