BWC Blog

2024 - An Overall Positive Start

As of January, evolving global macro-financial indicators suggest a promising beginning to 2024. This comes amidst a context where inflationary pressures are easing, affecting short-term monetary policy prospects, and where there's notable resilience to ongoing risk factors.

25 Years of the Euro

The launch of the European Monetary Union (EMU) in 1999 signifies a turning point in international economics history and to this day serves as one of the most important events of the past century, bringing with it important economic, political, and social consequences for European companies and households.

A Call for Institutional Entrepreneurship

Beverly Barrett, PhD is policy program advisor and economics faculty at the University of St. Thomas, Houston. Dr. Barrett is the author of Globalization and Change in Higher Education: The Political Economy of Policy Reform in Europe (Palgrave Macmillan). You may email her at beverly@beverlybarrett.org. This blog is a part of special series on the coronavirus.

A Global Climate Guarantee Company Could Accelerate Private Funding of Climate Projects

The purpose of this article is to make the case for the establishment of a new financial guarantee company (referred to as Global Climate Guarantee Company or “GCGC”) that would facilitate and scale up private sector debt financing of climate and sustainable infrastructure projects globally.

RATIONALE

Africa Sovereign Debt Spiral Foments Frustration

This past year, a decade-long Africa commercial borrowing binge with $30bn worth of bonds outstanding came to a screeching halt amid outright or near defaults, with distressed spreads as a measure of risk of over 1,000 basis points to US Treasuries for the sovereign benchmark index cross-section.

Debt topped the agenda at the US-Africa Leaders Summit in Washington, DC in December.

AI Could Breathe New Life Into Core Systems

The new kid on the block, AI, meets the original gangster, COBOL. Is it magic or is it a miss? COBOL, the Common Business-Oriented Language, is still very much an integral part of how data is stored and used by some of the institutions we trust deeply such as banks, insurers, healthcare providers, and governments. One would think that moving away from COBOL in our hyper connected and technologically advanced world would be easy.

Answering Yellen’s Call for a Shake Up of the International Economic System

In these times of information overload it is easy to overlook groundbreaking news.  In the midst of the G7 walk out of the G20 meetings and subsequent inability of the International Monetary Fund to issue a communique at its annual meetings during a period of unprecedented economic uncertainty, US Treasury Secretary called for a fundamental reform of the international financial architecture.  This is a major event for US policy, which is at the epicenter of the problem and the solution.

Attaining Ajay Banga’s New Bank Vision – Mainstreaming Partnerships with Civil Society

President Ajay Banga has huge ambitions for the World Bank. But are they likely to impact climate change, reduce poverty, and strengthen prosperity? Or will they amount to no more than fine phrases in speeches and reports?

Biden Should Implement a “Yellen Bond” Plan for African Debt

The OECD has estimated that external capital inflows to emerging market countries shrank in 2020 by about $700 billion relative to 2019.

Bretton Woods - A Changed America

The Bretton Woods Conference will celebrate its 80th anniversary this year. Driven by a United States keen to involve its partners in international problem-solving, the initial conference may have ultimately proved a high-water mark for multilateral economic policy coordination.