tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-75111631764103654842024-03-16T07:16:24.308+00:00Global Economics And StructuresGlobal Economics BlogTamashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11641190007103495073noreply@blogger.comBlogger74125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7511163176410365484.post-74729356166390325852011-08-12T15:21:00.000+01:002011-08-12T15:21:44.764+01:00All sweet Zurich, you darling!If you're looking for an example for the kind of global economic uncertainty we live in, the Swiss central banks announcement about plans to pack the Swiss Franc to the Euro must be a perfect one. Coming from a decidedly non-random process (just imagine the meeting that finally decided on this), and totally unforeseen by most bar the insiders. Made my day.Tamashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11641190007103495073noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7511163176410365484.post-68125591394828571792011-08-10T08:59:00.001+01:002011-08-10T09:17:35.495+01:00What ho Global Economics!This post argues (again) that there is no way ahead for the global economy without theoretical innovation.
The trouble is that the wave of innovations that has been sparked by the 2008 meltdown, still assumes that the world economy is built from discernible building blocks: the national macro economies. There are brill new models that incorporate the national financial sectors into the monetary Tamashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11641190007103495073noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7511163176410365484.post-35975667580071327262011-08-03T12:25:00.000+01:002011-08-03T12:25:55.277+01:00The Long Minute of the Global EconomyTh global economy's outlook: as if the 24 months since the summer of 2009 have flown by in one minute. Not much changed.
The future of the global economy is as uncertain as it was 2 years ago. (Would any self-respecting macro analyst dare to stand by a mid-term forecast of global GDP, oil prices, or even policy stance?) We still lack any coherent global institutional framework that could offer Tamashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11641190007103495073noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7511163176410365484.post-82550698253704820352010-11-02T22:47:00.000+00:002010-11-02T22:47:51.060+00:00Apropos Quantitative EasingWhat passes these days as monetary policy in the US and in the Eurozone is going to be a complete disaster for developing countries. Just think for a second what the taboos are is that emerging markets politicians cannot touch when it comes to monetary policy. Surely, the independence of the central bank is going to be top of anyone's list.
How do you build an efficient central bank in a Tamashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11641190007103495073noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7511163176410365484.post-54827048707113514872010-09-23T13:07:00.001+01:002010-09-23T14:34:17.523+01:00The Ancient Future of Finance(Book review of ‘The Future of Finance. The LSE Report’ -- you can download it here)
Hmm. What a perfect moment! An near-perfect crisis over (well, just, and perhaps), and one very much triggered and spread by the financial sector, offering a lab-like insight into the mechanics of global banking. The complexity of the structure, the proportion of what is global to what’s local, and the Tamashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11641190007103495073noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7511163176410365484.post-90561711259898507032010-08-20T09:38:00.003+01:002010-08-21T08:41:57.857+01:00A Tragedy Of The Global Policy CommonsTwo global economics observations about the ineptitude of economic policy.
First, we knew about the credit crunch for at least a 15-18 months before the September 2008 meltdown. Yet, the crisis was not only not averted, but perhaps not even slowed down. The months after the collapse of Lehman were spent in a frantic search for new policy solutions. Nothing seemed to have worked. The nature of Tamashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11641190007103495073noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7511163176410365484.post-47962596909499837522010-05-13T10:06:00.004+01:002010-05-13T10:53:43.156+01:00The Three-Layered Chess BoxA central question of global economics concerns the architecture of policy institutions. If you regard the global socio-economic system as a single unit -- a not entirely unreasonable assumption, perhaps -- then it is strikingly obvious that the system's optimal management would call for much stronger global governance functions than existing today. Global economics calls for efficient global Tamashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11641190007103495073noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7511163176410365484.post-90636249194269949652010-04-22T18:21:00.009+01:002010-05-12T16:21:39.320+01:00Kenya on the edge(Report from my friend, Balazs Szendroi)
"Knowledge Is Power"(Motto painted on the walls of thousands of schools around rural Kenya)
"In case of accident, do not admit liability"(Advice printed on all Kenyan car insurance certificates)
Kenya is a beautiful country. The breathtaking views along the descent into the Rift Valley, the sounds and colours of hundreds of thousands of flamingos on LakeTamashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11641190007103495073noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7511163176410365484.post-55386038862783942782010-03-25T12:24:00.010+00:002010-03-25T19:44:09.615+00:00Obama’s health reform success hands global financial regulation to EuropeAnd now onto financial regulation? Europe is poised to win from stalemate of the US Senate.
The fallout from the success of the US health care reform bill might just determine the fate of the emerging global regulation. The Volcker-Obama-Dodd initiative will never see daylight as a law without all the teeth are pulled out: the Republican’s strategy of obstruction makes any meaningful financial Tamashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11641190007103495073noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7511163176410365484.post-79954227919409723632010-03-22T11:34:00.008+00:002010-03-24T11:40:42.903+00:00Obama’s Global Health Care ImpactFinally Obama might have some global consequences...
The crisis offered hope about the global reform. Although we are still struggling with understanding how the global economy works, the eventual development of some kind of global economic policy umbrella has become increasingly inevitable. As this blog pointed out before, Barack Obama had a unique opportunity to design and push through such a Tamashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11641190007103495073noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7511163176410365484.post-76993231574735449522010-01-27T11:29:00.004+00:002010-01-27T15:04:13.722+00:00Obama Freeze(The past two months I have been working on some exceptionally interesting problems, and hence the absence from the blog. Here is one to the 'dear readers' who bugged me to return.)
Fascinating it is to see the way our thinking evolved about the 'optimal' policy behaviour in a crisis. You could argue that before the meltdown of September 2008 we all thought that the way to deal with recession Tamashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11641190007103495073noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7511163176410365484.post-52199152137142916812009-11-20T10:10:00.002+00:002009-11-25T00:28:58.956+00:00Recovery Doubts(The Green-Shoot Worm And The Abracadabra Herd)
It is almost as interesting to follow the way the commentators of the global economy keep moving in odd herds, as it is to watch this wannabe recovery itself. A few days before the meltdown most of the people -- now famously -- thought things would be just fine. Then suddenly the lightning struck and the entire herd changed direction. But it turnedTamashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11641190007103495073noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7511163176410365484.post-76178209740576497042009-11-16T10:20:00.010+00:002009-11-17T13:02:57.387+00:00Copenhagen, Barack Obama, and Global Economics"Obama damps hopes for final treaty on climate change at Copenhagen"
Grrrrrr.
The week starts with yet more global procrastination.
This blog has had a critical, but hopeful attitude towards Barack Obama's global policies. The global economics observation that the 2007-2009 crisis was an evidence of the failure of pre-existing institutions led to the expectation of a global economic policy Tamashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11641190007103495073noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7511163176410365484.post-26091412622304289382009-11-06T13:35:00.010+00:002009-11-06T14:01:15.300+00:00The Honey Trap(Notes from the Papuan Highlands, from about a year ago)
Imagine that globalisation had turned out differently. It had been not European cultures that somehow got spread and dominated the world, in fact created the ‘world’, but it would have come from the other end of the massive Eurasian continent. Imagine that Augustus, Kepler, Darwin, John von Neumann were actually Papuan highlanders, from Tamashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11641190007103495073noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7511163176410365484.post-81976929312310296662009-10-15T09:57:00.001+01:002009-10-15T10:38:28.916+01:00Nature's Planetary BoundariesA fantastic Nature page on Global Boundaries. The only missing item is the human society and global economics...
This Nature publication is a great overview of the boundaries that humanity should not cross, if it wants to ensure its survival. However, you can really not do this well, unless you deal with the nature of human society itself. You cannot treat the global society as being separate Tamashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11641190007103495073noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7511163176410365484.post-7354347322999332172009-10-09T14:35:00.008+01:002009-10-14T15:53:28.297+01:00Global Economics On Ecological Diversity(Two notes on diversity.)
Note one. The we are making a mistake by focusing on carbon. Carbon is easy.
The claim that the carbon problem, or in general the problem of global warming, is easily solved might strike you as an odd statement if you are involved in the effort to curb the release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Clearly, getting the global society to recognise the problem and Tamashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11641190007103495073noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7511163176410365484.post-69845701459750055672009-10-01T11:59:00.002+01:002009-10-01T12:52:14.666+01:00Global Economics And Global Government(Funny how an idea that looked so strange and impossible even a few years ago, is self evident now.)
A very odd thing is going on in the world. The rise of the global market led to unprecedented global flows of products and services, technology and capital, people and resources. International economics is giving way to global economics. It has become clear that there can be no national Tamashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11641190007103495073noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7511163176410365484.post-70522969344269902412009-09-15T11:10:00.014+01:002009-09-16T11:45:33.290+01:00Global Policy Options Open Up Again(Two boats, a lot of waves, and one Mount Fuji)There’s a new law of global economics: the deeper you are in a crisis, the emptier the policy tool box becomes. And the emptier the policy toolbox is, the more similar the measures become in practice. (Global economics starts its life in a very odd way…)Before the credit crunch, we all thought that monetary policy was rapidly converging towards Tamashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11641190007103495073noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7511163176410365484.post-30822209734282976822009-09-10T14:25:00.007+01:002009-09-10T15:31:17.358+01:00Reinventing the BRICs Amidst The Global RecoveryThe silly talk is returning about emerging markets as the global economy is turning into a full-blown recovery mode. In particular, there is a renewed hype about the non-existent group formed by Brazil, Russia, India and China: the BRICs.The reality is that the term BRICs has never made sense in either the International macroeconomics, or the global economics framework. For much of the 1980’s Tamashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11641190007103495073noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7511163176410365484.post-34917621050400412592009-09-08T10:33:00.013+01:002009-09-09T00:16:49.158+01:00Global Economics’ Disappointment In Barack ObamaOnce upon a time there lived a very very large dragon. This beast was the scariest of all creatures ever lived. It was taller than a house, and its mouth was big enough to gobble down six little children at once. Its teeth? Oh those giant, yellow teeth were the largest, sharpest, spikiest in the whole wide world. There were all kinds of princes, kinglets, knights, and quite a few of the smallestTamashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11641190007103495073noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7511163176410365484.post-42543935915619333842009-09-07T09:42:00.004+01:002009-09-07T14:24:46.492+01:00G20 In Yet Another Fake ActionIs that very funny how the G20 is doing it again? As the crisis unfolded, some 'out of line' people suggested that banks should perhaps be treated as utilities. They were wiped off the table. Now, that it is becoming clear that the largest economies of the world will again fail to harmonise real policy action, they are pledging to clamp down on the banks together instead. The previously Tamashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11641190007103495073noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7511163176410365484.post-55248403472416398882009-07-30T13:58:00.005+01:002009-07-30T14:20:38.777+01:00Discriminating Against Women in the Job Market(off global economics)At the apropos of an FT article about the small rise of the gender pay gap in Britain, I thought I would share an anecdote. After my years in Cambridge I took a gap year from academia, which turned out to be a gap decade. I was running a smallish research consultancy, seated in Hungary, but covering the macroeconomics and fixed income markets of many emerging markets. Our Tamashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11641190007103495073noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7511163176410365484.post-10850086473091402192009-07-27T11:46:00.009+01:002009-09-08T00:39:27.243+01:00Taking CountIn academia - unlike in my previous profession - one might occasionally be asked to check out his own previous forecasts. So here it is: a qualitative revisiting my global economics forecasts of the past two years.One. About the nature of the current crisis. The argument originally put forward was that the current crisis is that of models and not that of over-hype or under-regulation, as Tamashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11641190007103495073noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7511163176410365484.post-32053647004484506642009-06-17T16:32:00.012+01:002009-06-19T02:54:55.442+01:00Technology In Jobless RecoveryThe technology-update dynamics (see previous post) is central to the argument that the current crisis will finish with a jobless recovery, similar to the years after the 2001 dot.com bubble burst.The raw form of the hypothesis suggests that the firms that had shed labour during the recession subsequently invest into technology, new technology in particular, rather than expand their labour force, Tamashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11641190007103495073noreply@blogger.com154tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7511163176410365484.post-20487708588674468062009-06-15T22:36:00.019+01:002009-06-16T16:03:22.136+01:00The Jobless Recovery ScenarioThe jobless recovery scenario goes like this. (1) During a recovery (as at all other times) the basic labour market identity holds: the number of people employed depends on overall demand and productivity. (2) Productivity growth depends on innovation. (3) While the relationship between employment and demand is short term, the relationship between productivity and innovation is long term. Tamashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11641190007103495073noreply@blogger.com9