Episodes of debt accumulation have been a recurrent feature of the global economy over the past fifty years. This paper examines the factors that are likely to determine the outcome of the most recent debt wave, and considers policy options to help reduce the likelihood that it ends again in widespread crises.

An important economic paradox that frequently arises in the economic literature is that countries with abundant natural resources are poor in terms of real gross domestic product per capita. This paradox, known as the ‘resource curse’, is contrary to the conventional intuition that natural resources help to improve economic growth and prosperity.

China has recently overtaken the U.S to become the world largest importer of crude oil. In light of this fact, this paper formally compares contributions of demand shocks from China, the U.S and the rest of the world. It finds that China's influence on the real price of oil has increased over the past two...

We estimate a nonlinear VAR to quantify the impact of economic policy uncertainty shocks originating in the US on the Canadian unemployment rate in booms and busts.

The Doha climate talks in December 2012, wrapped up lines of negotiation that were begun years before in Bali. Negotiators resolved contentious questions about the future of the Kyoto Protocol and finally put the constraints of the Bali agenda behind them. Now they need turn to developing by 2015 a new agreement under the United...