A Final Word page 7 D espite the robust growth of the U.S. economy in the late 1990s, uncertainties in the global marketplace and changes in the economic and competitive environment have forced companies everywhere to reevaluate their current ways of doing business. Who could have predicted the rapid impact of e-technology on business? Who would have anticipated the effects of regional financia...

the commentator suggests that it is necessary to extend the classical connotation of  global city which focuses much on the functions of controlling global capital and production. global city should also include the dimensions of the leading role and capacity on health improvements and well-being promotion. the commentator agrees with authors’ assessments about shanghai’s substantial progress o...

Background The rising burden of disease and weak health systems are being compounded by the persistent economic downturn, re-emerging diseases, and violent conflicts. There is a growing recognition that the global health agenda needs to shift from an emphasis on disease-specific approaches to strengthening of health systems, including dealing with social, environmental, and economic determinant...

The following is a summary of the accompanying paper, A High Price to Pay: IMF Governance, Management of Developing Country Financial Crises, and Health Impacts, to which readers are referred for full details and supporting argumentation. The paper also includes discussion of possible counter-arguments to democratic reform of the IMF, and the historical context of IMF governance, which are omit...

Most economists and observers place the lack of fiscal discipline at the core of the recent Argentine crisis. This begs the question of how countries like Belgium or Italy (pre-Maastricht) could run large fiscal deficits and accumulate debts far beyond those of Argentina, without experiencing crises nearly as dramatic as that of Argentina? Why is it that Argentina cannot act like Belgium or Ita...

Many emerging market economies have used macroprudential policy to mitigate the risk of financial crises and the resulting output losses. However, macroprudential policy may reduce economic growth in good times. This paper introduces endogenous growth into a small open economy model with occasionally binding collateral constraints in order to study the impact of macroprudential policy on financ...

We propose a new model for policy analysis of banking crises (or systemic bank runs) based on the monetary framework developed by Lagos and Wright (2005). If banks cannot enforce loan repayment and have to secure loans by collateral, a banking crisis due to coordination failure among depositors can occur in response to a sunspot shock, and the banks become insolvent as a result of the bank runs...