Otaviano Canuto on the Global Economy and the Pandemic

*The recommendations put forth below have been published, both print and online, in the Financial Times.  The leaders of the G20 will meet on 30 November and 1 December in Buenos Aires for their annual summit. They need to acknowledge that the last two years have been characterized by strong headwinds for the world economy. This time, however, it is not a mixture of poor macroeconomic policies and bad business decisions – as in 2008 when they met in Washing ...

Islamic finance is a way of doing finance while respecting the Islamic ban on interest-based transactions and ensuring risk sharing between parties in all operations. Contracts are supposed to rule out features that would make them akin to gambling or “making money from money.” Furthermore, engagements in businesses considered immoral or ethically problematic are not allowed. Islamic finance therefore means, among other features: no pure debt securities, with interest rep ...

There are various definitions of Energy Security (ES) and numerous ways of understanding the concept. For this blog’s purpose, we will choose the familiar understanding of the latter as put forward by the George W. Bush Administration, i.e. it represents a situation where four characteristics are met, an energy supply that is: (1) Reliable (2) affordable (3) environmentally sound and (4) accessible.  Thus, ES represents the situation where there’s availability of energy a ...

If I were to synthesize the current situation of the Brazilian economy in one sentence, I would say: “it is suffering from a combination of ‘productivity anemia’1 and ‘public sector obesity2’". On the one hand, the mediocre performance of productivity in Brazil in recent decades has limited its GDP growth potential. On the other, the gluttony for expanding public spending has become increasingly incompatible with such limits in the potential expansion of GDP, particularly since ...

The concern over global imbalances has become an effort to systematically reduce current account deficits and surpluses, feeding the protectionist narrative. However, global imbalances are driven predominantly by domestic policies and conditions, not external factors. We do not know enough about the determinants of current account balances to set out precise numerical norms. Policy-makers should pay more attention to establishing the conditions that make current account deficits and ...