INTERNATIONAL FINANCE
November 2009
"Climate Finance"
Policy Brief
By The Harvard Project on International Climate Agreements
The finance of climate mitigation and adaptation in developing countries represents a key challenge in the negotiations on a post-2012 international climate agreement. Finance mechanisms are important because stabilizing the climate will require significant emissions reductions in both the developed and the developing worlds, and therefore large-scale investments in energy infrastructure. The current state of climate finance has been criticized for its insufficient scale, relatively low share of private-sector investment, and insufficient institutional framework. This policy brief presents options for improving and expanding climate finance.
October 30, 2009
"Why the Renminbi has to Rise to Address Imbalances"
Op-Ed, Financial Times
By Martin Feldstein, George F. Baker Professor of Economics at Harvard University
"China's policy of keeping the renminbi weak means that the US dollar must decline more rapidly against the euro, yen and other currencies to achieve the same overall trade-weighted fall of the dollar," says Martin Feldstein, member of the Belfer Center's board of directors. "China's weak renminbi policy therefore not only prevents remedying China's large current account surplus but also reduces Europe's exports," he says.
July 2009
"How Do We Know This is Not Another Great Depression? Lessons for Policymakers from the 1930s"
Policy Memo
By Jeffrey Frankel, James W. Harpel Professor of Capital Formation and Growth
The current economic crisis is fundamentally different from those we have experienced in recent past. The proximate causes of previous recessions (1980-2 and 1990-91) were increases in interest rates in response to inflation. This time around, however, low interest rates and loose monetary policy during the period 2003-2005 had contributed to a bubble in asset prices, rather than to inflation. This – coupled with an underestimation of risk in our financial system, failures of corporate governance, and excessive debt by both households and government – caused the crisis of 2007-09.
AP Images
June 28, 2009
"Regulating banks calls for attack on inertia"
Op-Ed, Financial Times
By Sir John Gieve, Former Senior Fellow, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School
"Of course, banks have had a terrible shock. They do not need telling that subprime mortgages can damage their health. They know that their risk management systems prepared them only for showers, not hurricanes. If they show signs of forgetfulness, at least for the next few years, their investors will remind them."
June 2009
"Back to the drawing board – regulation and macroeconomics after the crisis"
Policy Memo
By Sir John Gieve, Former Senior Fellow, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School
The financial crisis of the last two years has now led to a profound world recession. It calls not just for emergency measures but for major changes in our longer term policy. We need to go back to the drawing board not just on financial regulation but on macroeconomic policy and on macroeconomics itself.
May 28, 2009
"Economic Crisis as Catalyst"
Op-Ed, Agence Global
By Rami Khouri, Senior Fellow, The Dubai Initiative
Will the Arab world change course, and aim to really develop our vast human talent, free the minds and spirits of our youth, and move us towards a path of sustainable economic growth?
Photo by Martha Stewart
Summer 2009
"Economic Experts Suggest Causes, Next Steps for Economy"
Newsletter Article, Belfer Center Newsletter
By Sasha Talcott, Director of Communications and Outreach
Global leaders are facing the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Though Lawrence Summers, on leave from Harvard Kennedy School and the Belfer Center to serve as director of the National Economic Council, predicted that the sense of "freefall" may end in the next several months, a recovery is likely to still be some distance away. Belfer Center experts offer their thoughts on where the situation is headed, and what policymakers should do now.
AP Photo
May 19, 2009
"Stop Bribery Everywhere"
Op-Ed, Corporate Counsel
By Ben Heineman, Senior Fellow, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
"The most immediate and direct step for U.S. companies is to enlist (and test) the new administration to use its muscle to prevent U.S. business and labor from being disadvantaged by "protectionist" nonenforcement of the international commitment to stop developed-world bribery in other industrialized nations."
AP Photo
May 11, 2009
"Central banks need to avoid fighting the last war"
Op-Ed, Financial Times (London)
By Sir John Gieve, Former Senior Fellow, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School
No one favours bringing the full range of fiscal, monetary and regulatory functions back together under political control. I don't know of any major economy that manages with fewer than three institutions, and most have more. So we need a structure that gives each body a clear remit, but recognises their interdependence and ensures effective co-operation.
AP Photo
April 4, 2009
"China’s Recovery and Global Growth"
Op-Ed, The Korea Herald
By Martin Feldstein, George F. Baker Professor of Economics at Harvard University
China is likely to be the first of the major economies to recover from the current global downturn. Its pace of expansion may not reach the double-digit rates of recent years, but China in 2010 will probably grow more rapidly than any country in Europe or in the western hemisphere.
