"Reshaping Economic Geography. World Development Report 2009"

Reshaping Economic Geography

Reshaping Economic Geography

Geography and Economic Development

Location and climate have large effects on income levels and income growth through their effects on transport costs, disease burdens, and agricultural productivity, among other channels. Geography also seems to affect economic policy choices. Many geographic regions that have not been conducive to modern economic growth have high population densities and are experiencing rapid increases in popu...

Economic Freedom of the World: 2009 Annual Report

Since the end of 2007, the world has experienced a sharp and deep decline in economic activity, which in this paper for the sake of brevity will be referred to as “the current recession.” The United States has initiated many costly and extensive policies to fight this recession that are likely to have detrimental effects on economic freedom in that country. This chapter considers these detrimen...

Economic Freedom of the World: 2009 Annual Report

government actions and interventions caused, prolonged, and worsened the financial crisis. They caused it by deviating from historical precedents and principles for setting interest rates, which had worked well for 20 years. They prolonged it by misdiagnosing the problems in the bank credit markets and thereby responding inappropriately by focusing on liquidity rather than risk. They made it wo...