By Steffen Murau and Jens van ‘t Klooster As financial markets are again putting Italy under pressure, the new political party, Italexit per l’ Italia, promises an easy answer: leave the European Union (EU) to regain sovereignty. Economists, lawyers and political scientists regularly assert that joining the euro means giving up all monetary sovereignty. However, […]
Even though monetary sovereignty remains an important reference point in both academic discourse and international politics, it has – throughout past decades – repeatedly been declared “over.” Creeping dollarization subjects states across the world to monetary and financial decisions made in the United States, while local financial systems depend increasingly on globally active mega-banks, asset […]
By Lara Merling Group of 7 (G7) leaders met in Schloss Elmau, Germany last week from June 26-28 for a key summit amid converging crises: Russia’s war in Ukraine, the consequential severe impacts on food and energy prices, the ongoing pandemic, a looming debt crisis in the Global South and a worsening climate crisis. However, […]
International sharing of the risk of disasters through insurance markets lies on a spectrum defined by two ideal types: full risk sharing and autarky. The full risk sharing case features 100 percent insurance coverage for losses within a country and a high degree of international reinsurance to spread the risks globally. Domestic full insurance abstracts […]
After several years of negotiations to “modernize” the Energy Charter Treaty (ECT), members must decide by June 24, 2022, whether to amend provisions of the treaty, leave it as is or withdraw from it entirely. The ECT is the only international investment treaty with a sectoral focus on energy. It has been ratified by 50 […]
By Rishikesh Ram Bhandary It’s ‘now or never’ to keep global warming below 1.5°C, but achieving this target requires a substantial coordinated effort to increase the scale and pace of efforts to transition away from fossil fuels. A key part of this transition is putting an end to financing of new fossil fuel projects around […]
With the recent end of public finance for coal power, many multilateral development banks (MDBs) are working to move financing activity away from other fossil fuels, including natural gas. But in the past, as MDBs moved away from certain types of energy projects, China emerged as the largest public financier and, in some cases, the […]
Whether or to what degree climate-vulnerable developing countries have fiscal space is a key question confronting the international public finance community today. A new technical paper by Toby Melissa C. Monsod, Mary Anne Majadillas and Maria Socorro Gochoco-Bautista for the Task Force on Climate, Development and the International Monetary Fund studies the availability of fiscal […]
If global warming is to be kept below 1.5C, states need to rapidly phase out fossil fuels. But government efforts to limit fossil fuels, such as cancelling pipelines and denying drilling permits, will impact asset holders and demands for compensation will ensue. When assets are protected by international investment treaties, legal claims can be brought […]
By Lara Merling On April 11, the Boston University Global Development Policy Center co-hosted a panel as part of the 2022 International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank Spring Meetings Civil Society Policy Forum. The panel, featuring global experts and advocates, explored the IMF’s proposal to establish a Resilience and Sustainability Trust (RST) as a […]