Decarbonization will transform global production and trade patterns so radically that new growth opportunities are bound to arise for the Global South. The goal for them should not be to stop global warming by restricting domestic emissions, but rather to carve out a role for themselves in a rapidly greening world economy.
We should be planning to vaccinate the world annually, but we are on track to take twice as long, not least because vaccine developers are withholding their intellectual property so that they can recoup costs. Yet there is a straightforward solution that would leave everyone better off.
In recent decades, economics has gone from defining itself as a set of questions to defining itself as a set of methods, all based on individuals making decisions. By doing so, it has undermined its own ability to make progress.
Non-pharmaceutical interventions have been key to containing the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. This column examines whether the effectiveness of lockdowns on the virus’s spread and death toll has changed over the past year, using data from 152 countries from the onset of the pandemic through 31 December 2020. Initially, lockdowns are associated with a significant reduction in the spread of the virus and the number of related deaths, but this effect declines over time. Lockdown does not work as a continuous containment policy in the...
Brazil seems determined to test the limits of financial markets' tolerance for debt accumulation. It is not hard to come up with scenarios in which the country's debt burden reaches 125% of GDP or more by 2025.
This interview series is aimed at addressing fundamental issues related to global capitalist civilization with 8 basic questions. The objectives of this project are to shed light on the most salient challenges facing human civilization, explore the role of economics and the inner workings of capitalism, and heighten people’s awareness of both the economic system in which they live and work, and the role of economics in understanding this ever-changing system.
A full reboot of global commerce is counting on business travelers being allowed to cross borders again. But even as vaccine rollouts gather pace, a return to a pre-pandemic ...
Hay una herramienta económica que debería ocupar un lugar central en la definición de los proyectos que aspiren a los fondos europeos de recuperación y resiliencia que gestiona el Gobierno: el Atlas de Complejidad Económica, un proyecto de la Universidad de Harvard que coloca las capacidades industriales y los conocimientos técnicos de un país en el centro de sus perspectivas de crecimiento. Este mapa permitiría concentrar esfuerzos en sectores con alto potencial para el país.
CAMBRIDGE – Poor countries are cheap. In 2019, a dollar could buy more than twice as much in Argentina, Morocco, South Africa, and Thailand as it could in the United States. It could buy more than three times as much in Vietnam, India, and Ukraine, and more than four times as much in Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, and Egypt. If a country is cheap, it should be more competitive and thus able to catch up with richer...
