The global consensus on trade is unravelling
(Lawerence Summers discusses the difficult economic policy faced by the US and the emerging nations):
...it is unclear which underlying driver of global growth will replace the one in place for the past decade – the US as importer of last resort. Global growth has depended on US growth, which has depended on the US consumer; and the US consumer has depended on rising asset values first of stocks and more recently of real estate. With falling house prices and a challenged financial system, US consumer spending is falling. The US is no longer in a position to be a net source of demand for the rest of the world. Indeed, with the drop in value of the dollar, US growth – which had been focused on imports and which had enabled the export-led growth of other countries – is a thing of the past. Already, Europe and Japan are in or are very close to being in recession.
The Bogs and Pitfalls of Democracy (Yubraj Acharay writes about the delicate foreign policy balance Nepal needs to maintain in order to not irritate both China and India. The recent visit by Nepal's Maoist's prime minister to China is against the usual tradition of first visiting India before going to China. India is already showing some concern in this matter.)
Workforce development as a response to information asymmetry
The Next Frontier: The Road Ahead for Low-Income Countries
(For Antionette Sayeh, head of IMF's African Department and former Finance Minister of Liberia, it is roads; for Domenico Lombardi, President of the Oxford Institute for Economic Policy and Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institutions, it is governance; Kumi Naidoo, Honorary President, CIVIVUS: World Alliance for Citizen Partnership, it is national ownership; for Andrew Kumbiatira, Executive Director of Malawai Economic Justice Network, it is investment in education; for Eveline Herfkens, Founder of the UN Millennium Campaign, it is delivering on promises to meet the MDGs; for Roy Cullen, Member of Parliament, House of COmmons, Canada, and author of The Poverty of Corrupt Nations, it is tackling corruption; and for Enrique v. Iglesias, former President of the Inter-American Development Bank, it is boosting productivity).
Simon Johnson on the emergence of the emerging markets (here is related video)
