News and Analysis: 1-15 May 2015 | EmergingFrontierMarkets.com

Based in: Manila, Philippines

Posted on Fri, 15 May 2015:

UN's Ban urges borders, ports be kept open to thousands stranded at sea in Southeast Asia, UN News, 14 May 15:
UN's sec-gen expressed alarm Thu. that some SEAsian nations may be refusing entry to several thousand people believed to be stranded on smugglers' boats in SEAsian waters. He urged govts to ensure that the obligation of rescue at sea is upheld and the prohibition on the forcible return of individuals to their nation of origin where they could face persecution

Blanchard: 10 takeaways from the 'Rethinking macro policy: Progress or confusion?', IMF (blog), 1 May 15:
Here are some of my takeaways from last month's confab on 'Rethinking Macroeconomic Policy', the 3rd that the IMF has organized. 1) What will be the 'new normal'?; 2) What the new normal will be matters a lot for policy design; 3) Can we hope to limit systemic financial risk?; and 4) The complex effects of capital flows, writes IMF chief economist

Joseph Stiglitz: Showing cracks -- An excerpt from The Great Divide, WW Norton, Apr '15 [PDF, via scribd]:
In the list of who is to be blamed, I add one more category: economists -- the many economists who claimed that markets were self-regulating, who provided the so-called intellectual underpinnings to the deregulatory movement, in spite of important advances in economic theory which had explained why financial markets need to be, and should be, regulated, writes Nobel Laureate '01

Posted on Wed, 13 May 2015:

Asia tops biggest global school rankings, BBC News, 13 May 15:
The biggest ever global school rankings have been published, with Asian nations in the top 5 and African nations at the bottom. Singapore heads the table, followed by Hong Kong. The findings will be formally presented at the World Education Forum in SKorea next week (An open letter to OECD's head of Prog for Int'l Student Assess. | Reply by OECD PISA head, Guardian, May '14)

Coffers: Bill McNabb -- The tax threat to your mutual fund, WSJ, 6 May 15 [via Yahoo]:
An open letter to all mutual-fund investors: You may be subject to a new "tax", and it has nothing to do with the presidential election cycle. Rather, the levy would be decided by a consortium of financial regulators who can designate your mutual fund or mutual-fund firm as posing a "systemic risk" to the financial system, writes Vanguard Group's CEO

Coffers: Cecchetti and Schoenholtz -- An open letter to the CEO of Vanguard Group, Money & Banking, 11 May 15:
As an advocate for the small investor, you should be promoting regulation of the activities that threaten the financial system. This should lead you to support our position, which is to regulate the activities that investment firms undertake, rather than naming one or two big firms as "systemically important", write fmr monetary/econ dept head of Bank for Int'l Settlements in Basle; and NYU prof

Posted on Mon, 11 May 2015:

Germany, in shift, says Greek referendum on reform could help, Reuters, 11 May 15:
EU paymaster Germany said on Mon. it could make sense for Greece to hold a referendum on painful economic reforms under negotiation with its creditors. Euro zone govts have previously opposed such a vote, saying there is no time and it could destabilize financial markets and trigger a run on struggling Greek banks

Why I was wrong to believe that rich nations are rich because poor nations are poor, Brookings Inst, 1 May 15:
In my youth and up until the 1990s I still thought that the solution to global poverty lay in taking resources away from the rich and redistributing them to the poor. Too often we follow a 'fixed-cake' fallacy. The main mistake many people make is to assume that the economic cake is fixed in size, writes Wolfgang Fengler, a World Bank lead economist

The slow global spread of savings accounts, New Yorker, 15 Apr 15:
Last year, researchers travelled around the globe to talk about personal finance with 150,000 people from a range of socioeconomic classes, and living both in cities and in remote, rural parts of more than 140 nations. The questions they asked were, at times, probing. If they needed to come up with emergency funds, how possible would it be, and where would the sum come from?

Posted on Sat, 9 May 2015:

Rediker: State capitalism by stealth, the new 21st century economic reality, FT (blog), 18 Apr 15 [via Peterson Inst]:
Geoeconomics was defined by its intellectual godfather, Edward Luttwak, as a contest defined by the grammar of commerce but the logic of war. Today, one of the most pernicious tools in this global contest is the evolving role of government in a market economy, writes fmr US rep to IMF exec board

Nook & Cranny: Q&A with Univ Chicago's behavioral economist Richard Thaler, Minneapolis Fed, Oct '13:
We are rational, self-interested optimizers: Homo economicus. So the neoclassical model of economics has held for over a century. It has been at the heart of the discipline's most profound theories, predictions and policy prescriptions. According to Amer Econ Assn pres Richard Thaler, it is also flawed (Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics [2015], Norton)

Posted on Fri, 8 May 2015:

Oliver Geden: Climate advisers must maintain integrity, Nature, 6 May 15:
The global climate negotiations' goal has become what is politically possible, not what is environmentally desirable. As the negotiations fail on emissions reductions, scientific advisers need to resist pressure to fit the facts to the failure, writes German Inst Intl/Security Affairs EU res division head (Little chance to restrain global warming to 2 degrees, critic argues, Sci Amer)

We asked an expert what would happen if the EU opened its borders to everyone, Vice/Germany, 29 Apr 15:
Even if the moral argument for open borders is accepted by most, people still seem convinced that it isn't a realistic option. The prevailing opinion is that Europe would collapse under the onslaught of 'third world' citizens. Yet few people are aware that this idea is being taken very seriously by some academics -- primarily economists, like Ctr Global Devt's Clemens

How emerging market growth is changing tourism, WEForum (blog), by R Martin, 7 May 15:
The impact of these emerging market travelers can already be seen in patterns of overseas travel into the US. In 2014, more than half of all overseas travelers (excl Canada and Mexico) to the US originated in emerging markets – vs. the early 2000s when only a third of overseas travelers coming into the US came from these countries

Posted on Mon, 4 May 2015:

Bill and Melinda Gates: Our bet for 2030, Milken Inst, Apr '15 [PDF]:
Fifteen years ago, the two of us made a bet that by backing innovative work in health and education, we could help billions of people improve their lives. For us it's proven to be the best job in the world. The progress we've seen so far is so exciting that we are doubling down, write co-chairs of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

Jason Furman: Ten facts about US trade, Council of Economic Advisers [CEA] (blog), 1 May 15:
A new CEA report presents original empirical evidence, with a summary of the extensive literature, on a range of effects of enhanced US trade and US free trade pacts. One example is that when countries make trade deals with China, outsourcing of American jobs increases, while US trade pacts do not change the rate of US investment abroad, writes Pres Obama's CEA chair

Boardroom/C-suite: Glenn Hubbard -- Do B-school rankings really matter?, Fortune, 6 Apr 15:
As a biz school dean, I am often asked about rankings. Alumni wonder whether their degrees have lost -- or gained -- value because of rankings, and aspiring applicants fret about which rankings to trust. Given the element of subjectivity involved, it's tempting to conclude, as many univ leaders do, that rankings do not matter, writes Pres GW Bush's CEA chair [via author's site]

Posted on Fri, 1 May 2015:

Ben Bernanke: On the WSJ editorial on 'the slow-growth Fed', Brookings (blog), 30 Apr 15:
For the 2nd year in a row, the 1st-qtr GDP figures were disappointing. The Wall St J uses the opportunity to argue (again) for tighter monetary policy. It points out that the Fed Open Market Cmte's projections of econ growth have been too high since the financial crisis, which is true. Therefore (WSJ concludes), monetary policy is not working, writes fmr Fed Reserve chair

Dambisa Moyo: Creating a global framework for immigration, McKinsey, Jan '15:
Human capital will be both a key source of challenge and opportunity for enhancing the prospects for long-term global prosperity. Unfortunately, we don't treat it that way. Although labor quality and quantity are key inputs of canonical models of econ growth, there remains no globally integrated approach to migration, writes African-born author of Dead Aid: Why aid is not working (2009)

Charter Cities and growth theory - Q&A with NYU's Paul Romer, iMoney Mag, Mar '15 [via Romer's blog]:
When I was in Hong Kong in Mar, I had an interesting interview with the mag's Cloud Yip. Q: Which model of Charter City is the best? Other than Hong Kong and Shenzhen, do you agree that Singapore may be the best model?; What can ordinary people like our readers do for the Charter City project?; Do you agree that growth theory is not a hot topic in econ research right now?

EmergingFrontierMarkets.com

emerging and frontier markets:

the unofficial field guide