Global financial crisis and emerging issues for public policy

Abstract

After surveying causes of the crisis and common features of the few emerging markets that were in trouble, the paper turns to the road ahead. Even with global agreement on policy stimulus, action was mostly national. Progress on other reform is yet to occur. The intellectual framework and ethical forces that caused the crisis continue to dominate. With problems of timing, sequence, and country context, global convergence on exit may be difficult. Prolonged stimulus and spillovers of measures in large countries create risks for emerging markets since the markets do not give them much leeway. Pragmatism will outperform ideology, but questions include the extent of financial globalization when governments' are responsible for citizens' welfare? How to reconcile the shift in supply of and demand for finance towards emerging markets with the severe stress in the existing centres of financial intermediation?