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The Two Sides of Capital Flows into Brazil
There was a significant inflow of funds in Brazil’s external financial account in October and November for investments in both stocks and fixed income instruments. The bulk of the recent inflow has come in a passive way, and it did
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Geoffrey Okamoto, First Deputy Managing Director of the IMF: Knightmare Uncertainty
The American economist Frank Knight theorised about the difference between risk and uncertainty in his classic book Risk, Uncertainty and Profit. Risk is “a quantity susceptible of measurement.” A precise outcome may not be known, but the probability of a
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Building the Bridge Between Non-financial and Mandatory Reporting
BP CEO Bernard Looney’s courageous announcement that BP will transition to becoming a green energy pioneer shows the need for a new supporting logic for a standard measurement system. If BP is prepared to publicly commit to do the right
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Matein Khalid: A Random Walk Down Silicon Valley’s Pre-IPO Deal Flow
2020 was a spectacular year for investing in late stage technology unicorns and I am proud to have led significant investor syndicates from the Gulf for Elon Musk’s SpaceX, the e-learning marketplace Udemy and Swedish fintech Klarna Bank. The secondary
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EY: Threats and Opportunities in a Post-Covid-19 Economic Context
A statement currently circulating on social media warns that “it is strange that certain world economies easily collapse when consumers buy only what they need”. Statements like this often contain some degree of truth. The social isolation linked to the
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World Bank’s Vice President for Infrastructure: Now is the Time to Rethink Transport and Logistics
Covid-19 has had a huge impact on transport. The response to the pandemic, from social distancing to lockdown policies for affected areas, has disrupted mobility and connectivity everywhere. It has had cumulative impacts on the basic infrastructure and systems that
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Don’t Expect Miracles from the Multilaterals
by Otaviano Canuto Latin American and Caribbean economies need help, but organisations such as the IDB are also stretched thin. With Latin America and the Caribbean potentially facing years of difficulties due to the pandemic and related economic crises, attention
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Markets Move in Anticipation of Boom Times
Yesterday, equity markets the world over went near-ballistic on the news that an effective vaccine had been developed to tame and possibly defeat the novel coronavirus. Already buoyed by Joe Biden’s win in the US presidential election, markets moved even
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Lucrezia Reichlin: Data Pioneer Hopes for a New Era of Economic Co-operation
Italian economist Lucrezia Reichlin is recognised as one of the pioneers of big data. Reichlin made history as the first female director-general of research at the European Central Bank (ECB), and currently teaches economics at London Business School. The Rome
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Whither Interest Rates in Advanced Economies: Low for Long?
by Otaviano Canuto We have previously discussed how, between March 2020, when the financial shock caused by COVID-19 occurred, and the end of August, the stock and corporate debt markets in the United States performed extraordinarily, despite gloomy prospects on
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