In 2021, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) issued a historic allocation of Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) equivalent to $650 billion. These supplementary international reserve assets were allocated to help meet the liquidity bottlenecks facing many countries due to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, because of the IMF’s quota-based decision-making structure, SDRs primarily flowed to more advanced […]
By Zara C. Albright On Thursday, February 17, 2022 the Boston University Global Development Policy (GDP) Center hosted Dr. Stephen B. Kaplan, Associate Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at the George Washington University, to discuss his new book Globalizing Patient Capital: The Political Economy of Chinese Finance in the Americas. The webinar was […]
By Emanne Khan The global COVID-19 pandemic, now entering its second year, has upended nearly every aspect of daily life. Large sectors of the labor force transitioned to partially or fully remote work, and other sectors have been hollowed out by layoffs. Women were differentially affected by the economic dynamics and new social demands which […]
By Rishikesh Ram Bhandary and Cecilia Han Springer Although Chinese leader Xi Jinping announced last year that China will no longer build new coal-fired power plants overseas, the Boston University Global Development Policy (GDP) Center’s China’s Global Power (CGP) Database shows 60 coal plants around the world that have received Chinese development finance or foreign […]
By Rachel Thrasher In the wake of the 2008-09 Global Financial Crisis, there was a movement by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Group of 20 (G20) and many in the academic community to investigate how certain policies could help stabilize the world economy. A critical focal point for this was capital flow management measures, or […]
China hosts over half of global coal-fired power generation capacity and has the world’s largest coal reserves. Its 2060 carbon neutrality goal will require coal-fired electricity generation to shrink dramatically, with or without carbon capture and storage technology. A new journal article published in Energies by Alex Clark and Weirong Zhang focuses on the employment […]
China exceeds all other countries in annual energy use and greenhouse gas emissions. The carbon intensity of China’s economy (i.e., the carbon dioxide emissions per unit of GDP) is also relatively high due to the use of abundant and low-cost domestic coal resources. Given massive domestic coal reserves, China uses more than half and produces […]
There is now a consensus that climate change and climate change policy pose ‘macro-critical risks’ to national economies and the global economy as well. The frequency of climate-related disasters has increased by an order of five over 50 years, according to the World Meteorological Organization. Furthermore, transition risks emerge from a late and uncoordinated introduction […]
While continued fossil fuel development puts existing assets at risk of exceeding the capacity compatible with limiting global warming below 2°C, plant conversions and new abatement technologies may allow for a smoother transition. In a new journal article published in Nature Communications, Yangsiyu Lu, Francois Cohen, Stephen M. Smith and Alexander Pfeiffer quantify the impact […]
With the world again reeling from a new COVID-19 variant, the economic outlook for 2022 is defined by uncertainty and inequality. Advanced economies, where vaccines are widely available, are beginning to recover, but concerns over rising inflation are prodding central banks to consider increasing interest rates. Developing countries, meanwhile, face bleak prospects: low vaccine access […]