 Featured Publication What are the roots of financial instability in the Eurozone? New research shows that trends of debt and volatility in the Eurozone's advanced economies actually bear a striking resemblance to similar trends in lower-income, emerging market countries. In emerging markets, volatility has been known to be correlated with high levels of foreign-currency debt; when a country's domestic currency is weak and it must borrow abroad in foreign currencies, this can lead to instability - a condition economists refer to as "original sin." But as illustrated in the new paper by Salvatore Dell'Erba, Ricardo Hausmann, and Ugo Panizza, similar effects seem to be occurring within countries using the Euro. Breaking new ground in macroeconomics, the authors reveal that in our post-crisis global economy, rich and poor countries are often exposed to the same vulnerabilities. Read more >> |
 Featured Publication
Despite recent improvements in primary school enrollment levels worldwide, many parts of sub-Saharan Africa lag behind, with girls faring worse than boys. But it is not obvious whether the gap lies on the supply side - that there are simply not enough schools and/or the infrastructure in place to access them - or if the problem is that there is low demand for primary education in the first place. HKS faculty member Dan Levy, along with colleagues Harounan Kazianga, Leigh L. Linden and Matt Sloan investigated the effects of Burkina Faso's BRIGHT program, a government program funded by the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) designed to increase the supply of schools that strategically target female enrollment. Their research finds that the program increased enrollment for all children, and especially for girls, as well as improving all children's test scores. Read more >>
|
 Featured Publication
Governments can play great roles in their countries, regions, and cities; facilitating or leading the resolution of festering problems and opening new pathways for progress. In this paper, Matt Andrews identifies 10 cases of great governments to answer 4 dimensions of this question: What kinds of interventions or changes help governments achieve greatness? Who leads these interventions or changes, and how? When do the interventions occur, and why? How are these changes sustained and implemented to ensure they yield results? The paper suggests two sets of answers to these concerns, combining them into rival theories that could explain how governments get great: Solution and leader driven change (SLDC) and Problem driven iterative adaptation (PDIA). Read more >>
|
 Featured Publication
Knowledge has become central to modern theories of growth. However, since knowledge transmission often requires human interaction, its diffusion across countries tends to be limited. How are the specific exports of countries affected given this limitation? A new paper by Dany Bahar, Ricardo Hausmann and Cesar Hidalgo tackles this question. The research finds that a country is 65% more likely to export a new product if a neighboring country is already an exporter of it. This result is consistent with the short-ranged diffusion of knowledge: the evolution of countries' comparative advantage is partly determined by the productive knowledge and technology available in their geographic neighborhood. Read more >>
|
|
|
 Visualize world trade markets and identify growth opportunities by country and industry |
|
|
