The formal launch of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) sets the global development agenda through 2030, placing significant emphasis on promoting social and environmental sustainability alongside economic growth and poverty reduction. Meeting the SDGs will require actions across a wide range of areas by both national governments and the international community. This paper examines the types of policies that developing countries will need to implement to foster economic transformation, ...

Latin America’s bold fiscal policy reaction to the global financial crisis was hailed as a sign that the region had finally overcome its procyclical fiscal past. However, most countries of the region have not yet rebuilt their fiscal space, despite buoyant commodity revenues and relatively strong growth in the aftermath of the crisis. Using the experience of Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, and Uruguay, this paper examines the lessons and legacies of the crisis by addressing the foll...

Pension reform is high on the policy agenda of many advanced and emerging market economies. In advanced economies the challenge is generally to contain future increases in public pension spending as the population ages. In emerging market economies, the challenges are often different. Where pension coverage is extensive, the issues are similar to those in advanced economies. Where pension coverage is low, the key challenge will be to expand coverage in a fiscally sustainable manner. This volu...

A Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist takes readers on a surprising tour of the world of garbage.Take a journey inside the secret world of our biggest export, our most prodigious product, and our greatest legacy: our trash. It’s the biggest thing we make: The average American is on track to produce a whopping 102 tons of garbage across a lifetime, $50 billion in squandered riches rolled to the curb each year, more than that produced by any other people in the world. ...

“If you’re interested in the revolutionary transformation of the meaning and use of money, this is the book to read!”—Charles R. SchwabCultural anthropologist Jack Weatherford traces our relationship with money, from primitive man’s cowrie shells to the electronic cash card, from the markets of Timbuktu to the New York Stock Exchange. The History of Money explores how money and the myriad forms of exchange have affected humanity, and how they will...

Winner of the Spear's Best Business Book AwardLonglisted for the 2012 Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year AwardFor the past forty years western economies have splurged on debt. Now, as the reality dawns that many debts cannot be repaid, we find ourselves again in crisis. But the oncoming defaults have a time-worn place in our economic history. As with the crises in the 1930s and 1970s, governments w...

Earth is our Business takes forward the argument of Polly Higgins’ first book, Eradicating Ecocide. This book proposes new Earth law, but it is also about something more than law: it advocates a new form of leadership which places the health and well-being of people and planet first. Polly Higgins shows how law can provide the tools and be a bridge to a new way of doing business. She argues, in fact, that Earth is the business of us all, not the exclusive preserve of the executives of the ...

Leading Liberal Democrats and policy experts re-examine their political approach and propose a radical new direction for the party, setting the agenda for the next election and beyond. The Green Book cogently argues that a low-carbon economy and environmental investments are the best way to escape from sluggish growth, create new jobs and share prosperity. It is a clarion call for Liberal Democrats to treat the environmental crisis as a core challenge of economic policy, not a discrete pro...

What are fiscal policy rules? What are the principal benefits and drawbacks associated with various fiscal rules, particularly compared with alternative approaches to fiscal adjustment? Can fiscal rules contribute to long-run sustainability and welfare without sacrificing short-run stabilization? If so, what characteristics of fiscal rules make this contribution most effective? And in what circumstances and contexts, if any should the IMF encourage its member countries to adopt fiscal rules? ...

Soya Bean, Incredible, and Mighty, is written to delight and alert westerners, and people around the world, of the virtues and wonders of the small, unassuming vegetable. Essentially, a fact is revealed that small things can truly bring great benefits to people in rather unusual and interesting ways. Because the Soya bean has drawn the attention of the most enquiring and sophisticated of minds, the end result is, it has actually changed the living standards of many people, and things that ...

The story of the worst environmental disaster in American history and its enduring consequencesBP Blowout is the first comprehensive account of the legal, economic, and environmental consequences of the disaster that resulted from the April 2010 blowout at a BP well in the Gulf of Mexico. The accident, which destroyed the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, killed 11 people. The ensuing oil dischargethe largest ever in U.S. waters-polluted much of the Gulf for mon...

IMF-supported adjustment programs aim to restore economic growth, while bringing about a sustainable balance of payments position. Achievement of these goals requires coordinated use of a variety of policy meansures, including monetary and fiscal, exchange rate, external debt management, and structural policies, which affect capacity use and productive potential. This book, edited by Jeffrey M. Davis, provides an introductory review of some of the policy issues in each of these areas.