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Five Lessons Evergrande Taught Us About The Chinese Economy
The Evergrande story is bigger than just one company. It’s about China’s unsustainable model of economic growth, which has relied on endless investment and a mad, debt-fueled development frenzy in recent years. That…
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How Countries Can Diversify Their Exports
By looking beyond commodities, the research shows that economy-wide policies such as governance and education help foster diverse exports more than narrowly targeted industrial policies, a finding that can better guide nations aiming…
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How to Tax in Asia’s Digital Age
Asia alone has roughly two billion internet users, with considerable room to grow. Asia’s advanced and emerging market economies have several locally headquartered tech giants—including Alibaba, JD.com, Tencent, Rakuten—and host foreign tech giants…
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How the Pandemic Widened Global Current Account Balances
2020 was a year of extremes. Travel all but ceased for a period. Oil prices wildly fluctuated. Trade in medical products reached new heights. Household spending shifted to consumer goods rather than services…
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Why Restricting FX For Food Import is a Misplaced Priority
When you look at the size of Nigeria's neighbours, you wonder what all the fuss is about. You worry about smuggling but look at the total size of Benin's imports - ridiculously low.…
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Global Imbalances and the COVID-19 Crisis
A new IMF External Sector Report shows that overall current account deficits and surpluses in 2019 were just below 3 percent of world GDP, slightly less than a year earlier. The latest forecasts…
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The Inflation Interplay in Nigeria
Five years ago, 5 naira and 10 naira currency were a significant part of our national denomination, and you could walk into any shop and get sweets, biscuits for that amount. This same…
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Tracking Trade During the COVID-19 Pandemic
Most trade takes place by sea, and—for navigational safety purposes—virtually all cargo ships report their position, speed, and other information many times a day. A new IMF methodology using these data can help…
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What is the Impact of Coronavirus on the Nigerian Economy?
An Introduction Though started on December 30 2019 when Dr. Li Wenliang dropped bombshell in his medical school alumni group on WeChat about the kind of illness he had seen from seven patients,…
