Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Links of Interest

The expected benefits of trade liberalization for world income and development  (it is much more lesser than previously expected/claimed...using the MIRAGE model, the authors estimate that full trade liberalization would increase world real income by US$100 billion (+0.33 percent) after 10 years of implementation....a different study had found that full trade liberalization would increase world welfare between 0.2 to 3.1 percent only.)

How imbalances led to credit crunch and inflation 

A fair Zimbabwe poll is not enough 

How best to manage global imbalances 

Mohamed El-Erian writes: "...the fact that the system has ended up eschewing the superior policy solution speaks to the urgency of learning from them. An increasingly interconnected world cannot maintain high growth and low inflation without a bold modernisation of the mechanisms for international policy co-ordination, starting with the G7. Governments must continue to refine their policy instruments and pay greater attention to the secondary and tertiary consequences of their actions. The private sector must assume greater responsibility for ­forward-looking risk management. In the absence of these changes, the inevitable adjustment of the global imbalances will continue to entail a serious cost in global welfare."

Does money transcend cultural identity?  

Lessons from Latin America: Donors, democracy and development 

How a Kenyan village tripled its corn harvest (thanks to Sachs's Millennium Villages Project)

Georgy Dyson at the TED: The birth of the computer