Integrated – economic, environmental, and social – assessment tools can provide a clear indication of both the positive and the negative impacts of trade liberalisation from which effective policies to reduce the negative impacts, and strengthen the positive ones can be developed. Assessments feeding into the policy development process can promote increased integration of environmental and soci...

In the Iranian economy, part of the governmentchr('39')s fiscal policies and liabilities is always financed by banks. As government debt to banks increases, the private sectorchr('39')s access to loans and facilities is limited. It can cause undesirable macroeconomic outcomes. This study investigates the macroeconomic effects of government debt on banks in Iran over 1972–2016 by using an SVAR m...

Among all the newly industrializing countries, South Korea’s development strategies, as implemented during the period of export-driven industrialization (1962-80), stand out as a model case in which rapid industrialization has been achieved by means of articulate trade and industrial policies. This paper, taking the historical perspective, critically examines the country’s industrial policies a...

This paper analyses the macroeconomic content of 15 PRSPs from a growth and poverty reduction perspective. It finds that, in the main and contrary to new trends in developed and middle income countries, their macroeconomic policy frameworks lack the necessary flexibility to deal with external shocks and to appropriately address macroeconomic volatility. To ilustrate the point, their fiscal and ...

Organized by three distinguished members of the JBS Editorial Board – Marc Bickle, PhD, of the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics (Germany); Hakim Djaballah, PhD, of Institut Pasteur Korea (South Korea); and Lorenz Martin Mayr, PhD, of AstraZeneca (UK) – this special issue demonstrates how RNAi is enjoying a revival of popularity and is increasingly being applied to dis...

The paper by Marcel Fratzscher investigates capital flows to emerging market economies (EMEs) prior to, during and after the global financial crisis (GFC). It considers the relative importance of ‘push’ versus ‘pull’ factors in driving capital flows, where ‘push’ factors are external variables such as US macroeconomic news and ‘pull’ factors are internal variables such as a country’s institutio...

Achieving the Millennium Development Goals is increasingly being accepted as a major development objective in Asian and Pacific countries. In this paper, it is argued that, in order to fulfill this objective, attention needs to be paid to the nexus between achieving the Goals and economic growth. Pro-growth MDGs are as important as pro-MDG growth. Appropriate macroeconomic and sectoral policies...

We examine in a unified framework three recent perspectives on country risk: debt intolerance, original sin, and currency mismatches. We find statistical evidence supporting aspects of all three, though the strength of that support varies considerably across hypotheses and a number of open questions remain. Our evidence is consistent with the view that good domestic macroeconomic and structural...