Private rights and public problems

Intellectual property rights (IPRs)—patents, copyrights, and trademarks—have moved from an arcane area of legal analysis and a policy backwater to the forefront of global economic policymaking. Apple and Samsung's patent battle illustrates the importance of IPRs and how they impact everyone. Priv...

Prospects for a us-taiwan free trade agreement

Taiwan has a special status for the United States, as both a leading high-technology economic partner and a place of political and security concern. The authors look at both the quantitative and qualitative evidence on the potential effects of a US-Taiwan free trade agreement (FTA), both for maxi...

Reference rates and the international monetary system

Growing global imbalances threaten to induce a collapse of the dollar, which could in turn produce a severe recession in the rest of the world. This crisis could force countries to say "never again" and search for a system to prevent similar disasters. The system that could do so is a reference r...

Regional trading blocs in the world economic system

This book explores whether the world economy is breaking up into regional trading and currency blocs centred on the European Community, Japan and the United States. Frankel uses trade, investment and financial data to assess this issue. He concludes with an analysis of how trends in regional econ...

Resolving the european debt crisis

What began as a relatively localized crisis in Greece in early 2010 soon escalated to envelop Ireland and Portugal. By the second half of 2011, the contagion had spread to the far larger economies of Italy and Spain. In mid-September the Peterson Institute and Bruegel hosted a conference designed...

Rising tide

In 1963, John F. Kennedy said that "a rising tide lifts all the boats. And a partnership, by definition, serves both parties, without domination or unfair advantage." US international economic policy since World War II has been based on the premise that foreign economic growth is in America's eco...

Safeguarding prosperity in a global financial system

This report contains the findings and recommendations of an independent blue-ribbon commission on the future international financial architecture. The commission was sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations, and co-chaired by Peter G. Peterson and Carla A. Hills, with the Institute for Inter...

Sustaining reform with a us-pakistan free trade agreement

The United States and Pakistan established diplomatic relations in 1947, shortly after Pakistan gained its independence. Since then, relations have alternated between episodes of close partnership and sharp friction—reflecting the ups and downs of global and regional geopolitics. The tides of for...

The arab economies in a changing world

Compared to other regions of the world, the Middle East was once unique in its combination of authoritarianism and stultifying stability: No longer. Beginning in Tunisia, a wave of political upheaval has rolled across the region, reaching Egypt, Bahrain, Libya, and other countries caught between ...

The asian financial crisis

The turmoil that rocked Asian markets after the middle of 1997 and that spread far afield was the third major currency crisis of the 1990s. Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, and South Korea suffered outright recessions in 1998. In an effort to contain the crisis, almost $120 billion was pledged in I...

The battle of bretton woods

A sweeping history of the drama, intrigue, and rivalry behind the creation of the postwar economic orderWhen turmoil strikes world monetary and financial markets, leaders invariably call for 'a new Bretton Woods' to prevent catastrophic economic disorder and defuse political conflict. The name of...

The china boom

A systematic investigation into the origins and unraveling of China’s economic miracle.

The china miracle

The tremendous success of China's economic reform, in contrast with the vast difficulties encountered by the former Soviet Union and Eastern European countries in their transition, has attracted worldwide attention. Using a historical, comparative and analytic approach grounded in mainstream econ...

The international financial architecture

Shortly after the Mexican crisis of 1994-95, the major industrial countries undertook to strengthen the international financial architecture. They sought to reduce the risk of future crises by increasing the availability of information about economic conditions in emerging-market countries and st...

The shape of a swiss-us free trade agreement

At first sight, a free trade agreement (FTA) between Switzerland and the United States seems implausible, but this important new study concludes that an FTA between the two countries would be highly worthwhile to both. As leading advocates of market capitalism, Switzerland and the United States a...

The trans-pacific partnership and asia-pacific integration

While global trade negotiations remain stalled, two tracks of trade negotiations in the Asia-Pacific—the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement and a parallel Asian track—could generate momentum for renewed liberalization and provide pathways to region-wide free trade. This book inves...

The world trading system

Toward a new international financial architecture

The Asian financial crisis and the global economic turmoil that followed it have highlighted the need to avert financial crises and resolve them quickly if they do occur. This book addresses current concerns that existing institutional arrangements, including the Bretton Woods institutions, can n...

Toward a us-indonesia free trade agreement

Indonesia is the largest Muslim country in the world. Would a free trade agreement (FTA) with the country be beneficial both economically and politically to the United States? What kind of benefit could Indonesia expect? This book presents a case for improved trade relations between Indonesia and...