INTERNATIONAL FINANCE
AP Photo
December 7, 2009
"An Empire at Risk"
Magazine or Newspaper Article, Newsweek
By Niall Ferguson, Member of the Board, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
"Military experts talk as if the president's decision about whether to send an additional 40,000 troops to Afghanistan is a make-or-break moment. In reality, his indecision about the deficit could matter much more for the country's long-term national security. Call the United States what you like-superpower, hegemon, or empire-but its ability to manage its finances is closely tied to its ability to remain the predominant global military power."
AP Photo
December 1, 2009
"Can the Euro Zone Survive the Economic Recovery?"
Op-Ed, The Korea Herald
By Martin Feldstein, George F. Baker Professor of Economics at Harvard University
"Although the euro simplifies trade, it creates significant problems for monetary policy.... A single currency means a single monetary policy and a single interest rate, even if economic conditions - particularly cyclical conditions - differ substantially among the member countries of the European Economic and Monetary Union."
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.
November, 2009
Export Control Development in the United Arab Emirates: From Commitments to Compliance
Policy Brief
By Bryan Early, Former Research Fellow 2008-2009, The Dubai Initiative
The swiftness with which the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has launched its civil nuclear program presents a number of challenges for policymakers in seeking to ensure the program's safety and security. At the onset of its efforts, the UAE government consulted with a set of the world's leading nuclear suppliers to develop a framework that would help its nuclear program conform to the highest standards in terms of safety, security, and nonproliferation. The UAE drew on these consultations in making a sweeping set of international commitments in April 2008 to ensure that the sensitive nuclear materials and technologies it would acquire as part of its nuclear program would be securely controlled.1 While the UAE has been widely praised for the depth and breadth of the nonproliferation commitments it has made, it will be the UAE's efficacy at complying with them by which its success will be judged.
November, 2009
The Blueprint: A History of Dubai’s Spatial Development Through Oil Discovery
Working Paper
By Stephen J. Ramos, Former Research Fellow, The Dubai Initiative
While oil discovery brought revenue to Dubai and would change the city's physiognomy, moving it beyond the initial three settlements along the creek, it is clear that Dubai's status as a dynamic entrepôt for international trade and transshipment, its foundational infrastructure projects, and its "free port" policies to attract merchant communities from throughout the Gulf and the Indian Ocean, along with licit and illicit trade for re-export to Persia/Iran and India, were solidly established before "black gold" was struck in Fateh field.
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, Middle East 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?
