This paper argues that the current global reserve system is inherently unstable due to the use of a national currency as the major international reserve currency, and the high demand for “self-insurance” by developing countries. The latter is due to the mix of highly pro-cyclical capital flows and the limited room to maneuver that developing countries have to manage counter-cyclical macroeconomic policies. Both features imply that the system is also inequitable. An important insight of the paper is that such inequities feed into the instability of current arrangements. Any meaningful reform of the system must therefore address these two interlinked features.

This paper argues that an emergency climate program is needed, that such a program is only possible if the international climate policy impasse is broken, and that this impasse arises from the inherent – but surmountable – conflict between the climate crisis and the development crisis. It argues that the best way to break this impasse is, perhaps counter-intuitively, by expanding the climate protection agenda to include the protection of developmental equity. To that end, the Greenhouse Development Rights (GDRs) framework is designed to hold global warming below 2°C while, with equal deliberateness, safeguarding the right of all people everywhere to reach a dignified level of sustainable human development. We present in this paper an exposition of the GDRs framework and indicative quantification of its implications.

The current global reserve system has three fundamental flaws: first, a deflationary bias as the burden of adjustment falls on deficit countries; second, inherent instabilities associated with the use of a national currency as the major reserve asset; third, growing inequities associated with resource transfers to reserve currency issuing countries, enhanced by the high demand for foreign exchange reserves by developing countries, due to pro-cyclical capital flows and inadequate “collective insurance”. Instead, the system should counter-cyclically issue Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) (to also finance IMF facilities), ensure “development” SDR allocations, and create a complementary network of regional reserve funds.

The purpose of this study is to examine whether free trade helps or hinders industrialization and development. The author argues that there is neither a theoretical justification nor historical and empirical evidence to support what he refers to as “trade liberalization hypothesis”(TLH). The theory behind TLH is the doctrine of comparative cost advantage which can not be used as a guide to caching up and achieving dynamic comparative advantage which is a policy-based effort. Almost all successful industrializers went through a long period of selective infant industry protection before subjecting their industries to trade liberalization gradually. The forced trade liberalization imposed on the third world during the colonial era led to their de-industrialization, specialization in primary commodities and underdevelopment. On the basis of empirical study of a sample of developing countries which have undertaken trade liberalization during the last quarter of a century and the case study of Mexico, which has been the champion of liberalization, the author also concludes: that trade liberalization is essential when an industry reaches a certain level of maturity, provided it is undertaken selectively and gradually; that the way it is recommended by neo-liberals under the label of “Washington Consensus”, however, it is a recipe for destruction of the industries at their early stages of infancy, or development; that if through NAMA negotiations of the Doha Round, developing countries submit to developed countries to accept their proposed Swiss formula, with a low coefficient (10), and binding of their tariff lines at low levels, it would be at the cost of halting their industrialization process; that the low income countries and others at early stages of industrialization, in particular, will be trapped in production and exports of primary commodities, simple processing and at best assembly operation and/or other simple labour intensive industries.

Finally, as international trading rules are not conducive to industrialization and development, he argues for the need for a different framework of industrial and trade policies outlined elsewhere**. Such a framework, however, requires a radical change in international trade rules. Developing countries should not be worried, he emphasizes, to be “blamed” for defending their policy autonomy in order to enhance their development. *The author is a development economist, affiliated to the Institute of Economic Research,

This paper attempts to set out the principal issues that need to be resolved in formulating a proposal for quotas and voice reform in the IMF that could command broad support. Following John Rawls, we argue that “justice is the first virtue of social institutions,” and we use his theory of justice to provide a method for understanding what should be the case, in the context of voice and voting shares, before international institutions, such as the IMF, are to be justifiable to their members. The implementation of this process suggests, among other things, that a major revision of the quota formulas is long overdue, and leaving this unaddressed raises serious questions regarding the IMF’s governance which could develop into a core mission risk and jeopardize the relevance of the institution.

In emerging markets, policies for preventing and managing financial crises should be understood following the standard open economy macroeconomics text treatment. This, however, will prevent us from fully comprehending how to deal with these crises. To deal with financial crises in emerging markets, this paper brings about more promising theoretical tools borrowed from the interdisciplinary field of optimal policy design. It also considers the possibility that more than one market failure may occur simultaneously. The theoretical tools discussed here should serve to improve existing prevention and management policies. Admittedly, the interdisciplinary field of optimal policy design is comparatively young, thus offering scarce empirical support for disentangling competing models. Given this inability to decide upon the best possible model, we should consider at least two constraints that policy makers will deal with in the real world of financial crises. First, given that policy makers make crucial choices between parsimonious and innovative measures, this paper recommends parsimony because of the uncertainty about the true model. Second, high political implementation costs will always be present, and these are positively correlated with supranational institutional requirements. Considering issues of both parsimony and political constraints, we argue that any attempt to internationally harmonize rules and codes must be done with caution. With this framework in mind, we review some of the recent proposals about emerging markets crisis prevention. From the point of view of emerging countries and creditor countries taken as a whole, and benevolent IFIs, we conclude that promoting GDP indexed sovereign bonds is the best available proposal for crises prevention. In this paper, we leave aside the debate of the political economy or governance reform issues of the IFIs.