The World Bank Suspends her ´Doing Business´ Index

 

The World Bank Suspends her ´Doing Business´ Index

It was about time.

The World Bank has now suspended the publication of its global business climate index after identifying “irregularities” in its data that may have affected the ranking of emerging countries. I have criticised the use (and misuse) of governance indicators since long, not only for lack of data integrity and not just the ´Ease of Doing Business´ (EoDB) index. Most recently, joint with Robert Kappel, in our FES study on the ´G20 Compact with Africa´[1].

EoDB Indicators have been provided from 2003 onwards on a yearly basis by the International Finance Corporation, the private-finance arm of the World Bank Group (IFC). The EoDB puts up a global beauty contest for investors: processes for business incorporation, ease of getting a building permit, obtaining an electricity connection, transferring property, getting access to credit, protecting minority investors, paying taxes, engaging in international trade, enforcing contracts and resolving insolvency. Labour market deregulation (e.g. the ease to fire workers) had already been discontinued from EoDB rankings, in the wake of early protests by the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU).[2]

The EoDB index has been subject to heavy criticism since a while, notably at the OECD Development Centre[3]. Early 2018, the World Bank’s chief economist at the time, Paul Romer, told the Wall Street Journal he had lost faith in the integrity of the Doing Business index, suggesting it was being politically manipulated—particularly to embarrass Chile’s socialist president Michelle Bachelet. He then announced his resignation.

Two EoDB Heroes

Chile was not a single ´accident´. India’s rise in the Doing Business rankings celebrated by India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi (“the largest democracy on earth is also the fastest growing major economy”) turned out to be mostly an artefact of methodological changes (as did India´s faked numbers of growth). CGD author Justin Sandefur has urged that the World Bank “Should Ditch the "Doing Business" Rankings”[4]. And, on the heels of a massive arms deal with the US[5], Saudi Arabia sharply improved her rankings in the 2019 Doing Business report. (Mind you, the 2020 G20 Riyadh summit is still scheduled for November. Honi soit qui mal y pense.)

Governance indicators fail for a variety of reasons that I have exposed here[6] and there[7]. Especially harmful is global investors´ beauty contest contest indicator (EoDB), as eloquently summarised by former UNECA head Carlos Lopez: “The global investor focus on the index had encouraged countries to prioritise creating low-tax, low-regulation environments, sometimes at the expense of macroeconomic considerations. It makes countries compete into some sort of race to the bottom against the expectation that they will be rewarded with more FDI when in fact what matters most for investors is stability, predictability and regulatory clarity”[8].

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[1] Robert Kappel & Helmut Reisen (2019), "G20 Compact with Africa: The Audacity of Hope", Berlin: Friedrich Ebert Stiftung.

[2] Cf. Peter Bakvis (2006), How the World Bank & Imf Use the Doing Business Report to Promote Labour Market Deregulation in Developing Countries, Berlin: Friedrich Ebert Stiftung.

[3] Christiane Arndt and Charles P. Oman (2006), Uses and Abuses of Governance Indicators, Paris: OECD Development Centre Policy Studies.

[4] Justin Sandefur & Divyanshi Wadhwa (2018), „Chart of the Week #3: Why the World Bank Should Ditch the ´Doing Business´ Rankings—in One Embarrassing Chart”, Washington, DC: Center for Global Development (CDG).

[5] Javier E. David (2017), “US-Saudi Arabia seal weapons deal worth nearly $110 billion immediately, $350 billion over 10 years”, CNBC.com, 22. May.

[6] Helmut Reisen & Dilan Ölcer (2009), “Extracting more from EITI”, voxeu.org, 17. February.

[7] Helmut Reisen (2019), “The Abuse of Governance Indicators”, ShiftingWealth Blog, 25. June.

[8] Tom Wilson (2020), “World Bank suspends its business climate index over data ‘irregularities’”, Financial Times, 28. August.

Is Europe's freedom to be defended in the Sahel?

 

"Germany's freedom is being defended in the Hindu Kush." Former German Defence Minister Peter Struck said so in 2014. Then, Struck had in mind the prevention of the Taliban regime and the civil war in Afghanistan. Where totalitarian Islamic fundamentalists take control of an entire country, people try to flee from oppression and manslaughter. As grotesque as Struck's dictum may have sounded at the time, it still finds defenders today with reference to the migration crisis at Europe´s external borders.

However, the NATO mission in Afghanistan is now widely considered a "fiasco", even if no counterfactual comparison can be made[1]. The International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) was a NATO-led military mission in Afghanistan, established by the United Nations Security Council in December 2001. After almost 20 years of war, NATO had to accept that it was not possible to implement a Western political system there militarily. ISAF ceased combat operations and was disbanded in December 2014. After the US-Taliban deal of February 2020, United States and its Nato allies have agreed to withdraw all troops within 14 months if the militants uphold the deal[2].

The war in Afghanistan also highlights the fact that no longer interstate wars prevail but armed conflicts with and among non-state actors. These are no longer manageable with military armament. A similar insight increasingly applies to Iraq. Contrary to the hopes of Bellicists and Neocons (Bannon, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz), Western democracy cannot be enforced by military means.

Organisational beginnings of the so-called Islamic State go back to the Iraqi resistance shortly after the invasion by the Coalition of the Willing. In 2004 the group was known as al-Qaida in Iraq (AQI) and from 2011 to June 2014 as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS, later IS), or under the transcribed Arabic acronym Daesh[3]. Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, although a close ally of George W. Bush, sees the US-led invasion of Iraq as partly responsible for the creation of the terrorist militia Islamic State. He now admits "elements of truth" in the assertion that the Iraq war caused the rise of the IS.

After the destruction of the Caliphate and the occupation of the remaining territories of the IS in Syria in 2017, the Islamic state also shifted to the Sahel, partly in the form of the terrorist organisation of Nigerian origin Boko Haram, but similar in methods: assault, murder, robbery, enslavement and rape.

So the wildfire of terrorism has long since reached the Sahel. Boko Haram, an Islamist terrorist group in northern Nigeria, is also active in the neighbouring countries of Chad, Niger and Cameroon. Recently, it was the deadly attack on a convoy of French aid workers in Niger and the coup in Mali that put the Sahel back on the front pages. As was previously the case for the 'Hindu Kush', appropriate stabilisation strategies for the Sahel are now again being discussed, as was the case last week at the meeting between the German chancellor and the French president in his summer residence.

The Sahel renews the question of what use of military means is appropriate. Bamako, the capital of Mali, is the base for two multinational military missions, MINUSMA and EUTM.  MINUSMA (Mission multidimensionnelle intégrée des Nations Unies pour la stabilisation au Mali), the United Nations peacekeeping mission, was established by UN resolution in April 2013. This UN mission, the deadliest to date, originally comprised 11,000 (currently more than 13,000) soldiers and police officers. Since 2013, the European Union Training Mission in Mali (EUTM) has been tasked with "restoring lasting peace and stability in Mali", which is "essential for long-term stability in the Sahel and wider Africa and Europe"[4]. The EU mission oversees the training of 14,000 Malian soldiers.

The 'Opération Barkhane' is a French-led military operation to eliminate Islamist terrorism that has been taking place in the African Sahel since August 2014[5]. It currently comprises 4,500 soldiers (as of 2020). The area of operations covers the former French colonies of Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger. These countries form the G5 Sahel, which was created in 2014 and provides a rapid reaction force (G5 Sahel Joint Force) of 5000 soldiers and police officers (since 2019 led by Nigerian Brigadier General Oumarou Namata, on photo above)[6].

An interesting (French) map by Sara Bosmann (Twitter: @mindthemap) was recently published by NeoGeoPo, a French geopolitical newsletter. The map illustrates the locations of military operations and the geostrategic mix (raw material fields, trade routes, escape routes) in which they operate.

Figure 1: The geostrategic situation in the Sahel

Source: Sara Bosmanns, via NeoGeoPol

At the end of May, the German Bundestag extended the mandates for the participation of the Bundeswehr in European Union (EUTM Mali) and United Nations (MINUSMA) military missions in Mali. This means that a total of up to 1,550 German soldiers can be deployed in Mali and the Sahel, more than in Afghanistan at present. In a clever essay[7], Denis Tull (SWP Berlin and Institut de Recherche Stratégique de l'École Militaire, Paris) asks the crucial question, but unfortunately it cannot be answered clearly: What lessons can be learned from the engagement in Afghanistan to operate more successfully in the Sahel?

Security, political and social trends in the Sahel are mostly negative. This would suggest that the military approach is not working, as it already didn´t in the Middle East. The massive use of military means in the Sahel region may be counterproductive. A shift in emphasis towards a stronger focus on civil security forces, justice and law enforcement agencies, possibly against French security interests, is conceivable. However, the call for more autonomy combined with empty governance formulas ignores conflicting interests and conflicts between local actors, and Europe's fear of migration and terrorism weakens the instrument of conditionality.

Mali's institutional instability raises questions about the future of French and multinational military operations. It is always delicate to engage militarily in a country whose sovereignty is undefined. It is even more delicate for French troops in a former colony, especially after years of counter-couping. Although France rules out direct military intervention, fearing to be accused of colonial invasion with reference to its former role, it is still afraid of being accused of colonialism. (This will of course not prevent such accusations from being made anyway). But if the power vacuum in Mali deepens, French and other expats are directly threatened, a division of the country cannot be ruled out and totalitarian Islamic fundamentalists could take control of Mali.

Will we want to defend Europe's freedom in Mali?

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[1] Michael von der Schulenburg (2020), “Ende mit Schrecken“, ipg-journal, 25/3/2020.

[2] Wikipedia, Withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, retrieved 25/8/2020.

[3] Wikipedia, Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, retrieved 25/8/2020.

[4] EUTM, Mission Background, https://eutmmali.eu/factsheet-eutm-mali/

[5] Michael Goya (2020), “Coup d’État militaire au Mali: «Barkhane se retrouve visible au cœur du désordre», Le Figaro, 21st  August.

[6] Oumarou Namata (2020), „A Long-Term Struggle”, adf-magazine, 23rd June.

[7] Denis M. Tull (2020), “German and International Crisis Management in the Sahel: Why Discussions about Sahel Policy Are Going around in Circles”, SWP Comment 2020/C 27, June 2020.

The New DAC Method of Reporting Debt Relief as ODA: HIPC Redux?

Donors have agreed on a new accounting method aid treatment of debt relief on 24/07/2020. At first glance, these are good news for Covid-stricken poor countries. Debt write-offs have helped in the past stimulate new investment and lower funding cost as a debt overhang has been removed, most notably via the HIPC and MDRI initiatives[1]. But to what extent does the new DAC method of reporting debt relief as aid improve funding prospects for the poorest countries?

To help alleviate funding shortfalls among the world’s poorest economies, many of which are in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), international organisations and the G20^[2] had called on bilateral creditors to suspend debt payments from fiscally constrained countries. A debt service relief package has been approved by some of the world’s biggest lenders for more than 25 African countries, including the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the G20, the African Development Bank, and all Paris Club creditors.

So debt service payments to official multi- and bilateral creditors have been effectively halted since the Covid pandemic. However, neither China nor private creditors seem to have bought into a formal debt relief deal orchestrated by official efforts^[3]. These creditors might be free riders of official debt relief as their claims could gain in market value.

End July 2020, members of the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC), comprised of 29 donor countries and the EU, have agreed on a method for reporting debt relief as grant-equivalent ODA. Alongside reporting on a grant-equivalent basis, ODA figures will continue to be calculated, reported and published on the previous cash-flow system[4]. The DAC Chair, Susanna Moorehead, hailed the new accounting method on Twitter (30/07/2020): “Really important milestone! This collective decision by the DAC will generate much-needed support and development impact. It responds to developing countries' calls for increased debt relief by increasing incentives for donors to issue debt relief whilst protecting #ODA integrity”.

Oil exporting countries and Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) have been the main drivers for the rapid accumulation of public debt in SSA). Fitch Ratings forecasts the median government debt/GDP ratio for the 19 Fitch-rated SSA sovereigns to reach 71% at end-2020, from 57% at end-2019 and 26% in 2012^[5]. With an average SSA export/GDP ratio (2018) of 25% according to the World Bank WITS, the prospective end-2020 median SSA debt/export ratio can be quickly approximated at 280%. To be sure, post Covid debt ratios can´t be estimated with any precision as foreign exports as well as domestic currencies and GDPs have tumbled, leading to inflate debt ratios through a multitude of channels.

 As we learned 20ys ago (HIPC), however, the amount of *true debt relief* implied by the new DAC method will depend on how far the market value of debt forgiven was below its face value. Relief is zero if discount is at 100% and even negative if other ODA is lowered[6]. Again today, the new DAC method seems distorted by a lack of perspective on the ‘market value’ of the debt which is ´reliefed´. Understandable, because SSA official debt is not quoted on secondary markets. But it can be simulated, as Cohen (2000) did twenty years ago (see Table).

Table: Cohen´s Price Estimates

D/X, %	D, Secondary Market Price	D, Marginal Price
150	61	30
200	46	10
250	36	2
300	23	-3

D/X= debt-export ratio, %.

The appropriate ‘market value’ takes account of the risk of non‐payment: arrears, rescheduling and ‘constrained’ refinancing of various sorts. Building on econometric evidence that relied on middle income debtors in the 1980s, the Cohen had argued that the HIPC initiative was about ten times less generous than face value accounting had suggested. With a prospective end-2020 median SSA debt/export ratio approximated at 280% (see above), imputed secondary market prices are below 30% and marginal debt prices at zero.

One can certainly argue with the numbers but not with the principles: DAC donors are granting relief on debt that was almost worthless anyhow. While thus probably helping DAC donors to overstate ODA numbers via debt relief along the grant-equivalent method, the new method of accounting for debt relief might also crowd out traditional aid flows. The new DAC accounting method would free few ressources in itself while the reduction of traditional aid flows would be a net loss for aid recipients.

It is important, therefore, to resuscitate a former ODA concept: Country Programmable Aid (CPA) reflects the amount of aid that can be programmed by the recipient at partner country level[7]. CPA is necessary to reestablish DAC donors´ balance sheet truth and clarity. Otherwise, the new DAC method of debt relief will allow DAC agencies to brag big ODA numbers that do not reach needy low-income country budgets.

 

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[1] HIPC (Highly Indebted Poor Country) coordinated debt relief was provided by bilateral Paris Club creditors from 1996 and was reinforced by the MDRI (Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative) in 2005 to allow for the cancellation of claims on HIPC completion point countries by the IMF, WBG and the AfDB.

[2] Jonesday (2020), G20 Debt Relief for Developing Countries—Less Simple than it Appears, Insights, July. See also the call by the African Union for debt relief https://www.statecraft.co.in/article/african-union-calls-for-debt-relief-and-suspension-of-sanctions-amid-covid-19-crisis. 

[3] The Conversation (2020), Why African countries are reluctant to take up COVID-19 debt relief, 28/07/2020.

[4] The new methodology for reporting on debt relief in the grant equivalent system is complicated. It takes 26 (!) pages of description; see OECD (2020), Reporting on Debt Relief in the Grant Equivalent System, DAC, 30/07/2020.

[5] Fitch Ratings (2020), Rising Debt Distress in Sub-Saharan Africa, Special Report, London, 30/06/2020.

[6] Daniel Cohen (2000), The Hipc Initiative: True and False Promises, OECD Development Centre Working Paper No. 166, October. Also published as Cohen (2003), International Finance, Vol. 4.3., Winter 2001, pp. 363-380.

[7] CPA is defined through exclusions, by subtracting from gross ODA aid that is unpredictable by nature (humanitarian aid and debt forgiveness and reorganisation), entails no cross-border flows (development research in donor country, promotion of development awareness, imputed student costs, refugees in donor country and administrative costs), does not form part of co-operation agreements between governments (food aid and aid extended by local governments in donor countries), is not country programmable by the donor (core funding to national NGOs and International NGOs), or is not susceptible for programming at country level (e.g. contributions to Public Private Partnerships, for some donors aid extended by other agencies than the main aid agency). See DAC Glossary of Key Terms and Concepts.

The OECD Development Centre in the 1990s

This post is a follow-up to https://shiftingwealth.blogspot.com/2020/06/the-oecd-development-centre-in-1980s.html for the 1990s. If you have not done so, I recommend to read the post on the 1980s first. The focus here is on my time at the OECD Development Centre and on its bosses. So do not expect a balanced presentation of the history of the Centre. These are my personal perspectives only.

Table 1: One female & six male heads of the OECD Development Centre, from 1983

Period	Development Centre	OECD	Period
1983-85	Justus Faaland (†2017), N	Emile van Lennep (†1996), NL	1969-84
1985-92	Louis Emmerij (†2019), NL	Jean-Claude Paye, F	1984-94
1993-99	Jean Bonvin (†2017), CH	Don Johnston, Can	1996-06
1999-03	Jorge Braga de Macedo, P
2003-07	Louka Katseli, Gr	José Ángel Gurría, Mex	2006-
2007-10	Javier Santiso, Esp
2010-	Mario Pezzini, I

 

While Louis Emmerij was still in charge, his Swiss deputy Jean Bonvin was running the Development Centre in reality. Unlike Big Louis, Jean worked long hours. For the team worker, Catherine Duport (administration), Flora Feigenspan (Council) and Morag Soranna (a Scottish allrounder, a heavy smoker with heavy files in her office) were his close support. Jean was a fighter, and this was a major quality needed to defend the independence of the OECD Development Centre throughout the 1990s.

Equipped with an economics doctorate of the leading business school St. Gallen (Switzerland), Jean Bonvin had worked for UNESCO in the 1970s and then, on leave from the Swiss development agency SDC in Burundi. He founded in Bujumbura the new Faculty of Economic and Social Sciences, of which he was the Dean^[1]. Jean did scientific fieldwork with thousand smallfarmers, joint with sociologues and anthropologues. Having joined the OECD Development Centre in 1980, Jean was elected (with JC Paye´s support) its President by the Ambassadors´ Council. He would later seek a privileged contact with those diplomats, which led to a series of lectures by eminent academics and politicians. When Don Johnson followed upon JC Paye as the SG of OECD, however, the US Treasury became more proactive (via Bill Witherell).  For Jean Bonvin and the Centre, this meant yet more headwind.

Jean Bonvin played an early role in bringing emerging countries (South Korea, India, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, South Africa) closer to the OECD Development Centre, some of which have since become full OECD members. Upon the earlier impulse provided by staff member Michael Oborne[2], Jean Bonvin initiated the OECD's first research on China's five special economic zones and then established relations with research institutes, notably the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. From 1992, in partnership with China´s Minister of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defence, Bonvin launched a major project on the conversion of military industries into civilian industries involving 3 million Chinese workers.

Meanwhile, the scholarly standards were again rising at the Centre. In 1990, Kiichiro Fukasaku joined the Centre from GATT (now WTO); Ki would not only produce like clockwork economic studies dear to the Japanese delegation (e.g., on China´s opening[3], trade, FDI and policy coherence), but became known for collaborating with junior staff that would later make great careers inside the OECD (Federico Bonaglia, Marcos Bonturi, Luiz de Mello, to name a few). To his very great regret, Ki could not prevent the Japanese to quit the Centre; Japan´s submission to US diplomacy was stronger than her consideration for the countryman. Like me, Ki stayed until 2012 as head of division. He would then divide his time between Tokyo (Keio U) and St. Cloud.

Prof. Jean-Claude Berthélemy joined from Université de Paris 1, like Christian Morrisson had done in the 1980s[4]. Jean, whose command of English stayed fairly limited, was naturally at ease to communicate with and to rely on these two very solid francophone economists. Jean-Claude attracted another francophone economist from Strasbourg University, the Greek Professor Aristides Varoudakis. Both worked on the new growth theory, very much in fashion at that time, and what it meant for the role of financial policies in poor countries[5].

Meanwhile, economist Ulrich Hiemenz had joined the Development Centre as Deputy Director from the Kiel Institute in 1995, to stay until 2005. His role remained mostly confined to internal management; as he had been imposed by the German BMZ without any German follow-up on content or strategy, he may have been considered with some suspicion by both Bonvin and the SG of the OECD. Ulrich took special care of some flagship publications such as the IDB-Centre seminars and the nascent African Economic Outlook.

Brazil had joined the Centre already in 1997, Korea in 1996, and Mexico in 1994 (which I had the honour to visit in 1993 as part of an OECD team to prepare the country´s accession). This changed the nature of the Centre´s Advisory Board, away from a focus on diplomatic procedure to debate on substance of the Centre research programmes. The new ambassadors from emerging countries were not the European diplomats sent to the OECD mostly without proper training (and motivation). They were economists and politicians who knew development from bottom up.

After Jean Bonvin retired, Professor Jorge Braga de Macedo, a former finance minister from Portugal, was nominated in 1999 as new Development Centre President. Having obtained a Ph.D. from Yale U, an economics professor at Universidade Nova de Lisboa since 1976, a member of both the world´s leading economics networks (NBER and CEPR) and a former member of the Eurogroup, Jorge was well connected with mainstream economists. Which suit me fine, but others were afraid of simple application of mainstream policies to deep-rooted development issues. As Jorge was as keen on the debate of appropriate currency regimes for small open economies as I was, we became sparring partners on the issue, reinforced by Professor Daniel Cohen (ENS Paris). I like to think that our book has aged fairly well[6]. Perhaps the most cited book under Braga´s leadership was the Festschrift looking back at the Centre´s history on occasion of its 40^th anniversary[7]. Braga, a combination of wit and stinginess, advised me to publish less (!) as he aimed to shine as Centre president.

Indeed, the 1990s were good to me, with hindsight my best decade at the Centre. Starting from debt, financial opening and currency issues, I directed my analysis toward the impact of financial institutions for emerging countries, in particular pension funds and rating agencies. Often, I would bring policy lessons from Asia to Latin America and vice versa. Thanks to the painstaking formatting by Terri Wells, the OECD published with Edward Elgar Publishing two books with my collected essays of the 1990s. The first, published in 1994, dealt with international monetary problems in East Asia and Latin America[8], notably public finance, the macroeconomics of financial opening, and exchange rate management. The follow-up, published in 2000, explored the international aspects of pension reform, sovereign ratings, private savings and volatile capital flows[9].

Most quoted scholarly articles stemming from the 1990s were those on sovereign ratings[10], pension savings[11] and pension investment (for Chile´s finance ministry)[12], sustainable current account imbalances[13], managing the capital account[14] and measuring its openess[15]. Based on those and earlier publications, I was awarded Habilitation and became Adjunct Professor at Basel University. Two essays were awarded awards in the Amex Bank Review essay competition in international finance in 1993 and 1994 (subsequently discontinued). The Financial Times asked to write a comment on sovereign ratings (Green Light for Danger, 3/2/1998), while The Economist devoted a couple of Economic Focus Page(s) to my output. Sebastian Edwards (UCLA) invited me to Caracas to present my thoughts on beating the Impossible Trinity through generalised sterilisation of inflows at an NBER seminar.

My expertise emerging-country macroeconomic led to several noteworthy invitations by central bank governors, finance ministries and government think tanks. As I advocated capital-inflow controls and managed (rather than floating or pegged) exchange rates long before such advice became mainstream even with the IMF, I was unpopular inside the OECD that defended its Codes of liberalisation. Emerging-country authorities appreciated this advice as they were eager to defend their non-traditional export sector in the face of appreciation pressure excerted by hot money inflows. I recall invitations to Taiwan (Paul Chiu, h/t Maxwell Fry)), Chile (Roberto Zahler and José Antonio Ocampo, h/t Ricardo Ffrench-Davis[16]), Korea (Sang Woo Nam and Yung Chul Park), Thailand after the Baht crisis (M.R. Chatu Mongol Sonakul), Israel (Jacob Frenkel and Leonardo Leiderman), Pakistan (Sartaj Aziz), some Central European countries and also the Österreichische Nationalbank as well as the Federal Reserve of San Fransisco[17]. My friend Bernhard Fischer and I presented (and informed us) at SEACEN in Kuala Lumpur and Indonesia´s government in Jakarta (with support by then IMF ResRep Klaus Regling) our macro-financial sequencing advice for how to – prudently - open the capital account[18].

The Korean authorities, before joining the OECD in 1996, had even asked the Secretary General that I be their advisor for the accession process; but that I learned only a while after the event…

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[1] Elyse Ngabire (2017), „Hommage: Jean Bonvin, un grand ami du Burundi, restera parmi nous”, Iwacu – La Voix du Burundi, 29^th March.

[2] Michael W. Oborne (1986), China's Special Economic Zones, Paris: OECD Development Centre Studies.

[3] See, e.g., Kiichiro Fukasaku and David Wall (1994), China´s Long March to an Open Economy, Paris: OECD Development Centre Studies; Kiichiro Fukasaku & Henri-Bernard Solignac Lecomte (1996), "Economic Transition and Trade-Policy Reform: Lessons from China," OECD Development Centre Working Papers 112; Kiichiro Fukasaku & Yu Ma & Qiumei Yang, 1999. "China's Unfinished Open-Economy Reforms: Liberalisation of Services," OECD Development Centre Working Papers 147.

[4] I have touched upon Christian´s work in my post on the Development Centre in the 1980s.

[5] Their most-cited joint publication arising from jount work at the Centre is JC Berthélemy & A. Varoudakis (1996), Economic growth, convergence clubs, and the role of financial development, Oxford Economic Papers, Volume 48, Issue 2, April 1996, pp. 300–32.

[6] Jorge Braga De Macedo, Daniel Cohen, and Helmut Reisen (2001), Don't Fix, Don't Float: The Exchange Rate in Emerging Markets, Transition Economies, and Developing Countries, Paris: OECD Development Centre Studies.

[7] Jorge Braga de Macedo, Colm Foy and Charles P. Oman (2002), Development is Back, Paris: OECD Development Centre.

[8] Helmut Reisen (1994), Debt, Deficits and Exchange Rates: Essays on Financial Interdependence and Development, Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd., UK.

[9] Helmut Reisen (2000), Pensions, Savings and Capital Flows: From Ageing to Emerging Markets, Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd., UK.

[10] Helmut Reisen & Julia Von Maltzan (1999), „Boom and bust and sovereign ratings“, International Finance, Vol. 2.2., pp. 273-293. Julia married the ´future President of Brazil´ and is a Professor at business school Fundação Getulio Vargas, Sao Paulo (Brazil).

[11] Jeannine Bailliu and Helmut Reisen (1998), “Do funded pensions contribute to higher aggregate savings? A cross-country analysis”, Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv, Vol. 134.4, pp. 692-711. Jeannine Bailliu today is a senior policy advisor at the Bank of Canada.

[12] Helmut Reisen and John Williamson (1997), „Liberalizing foreign investments by pension funds: positive and normative aspects“, World Development, Vol. 25.7, pp. 1173-82.

[13] Helmut Reisen (1998), „Sustainable and excessive current account deficits“, Empirica, Vol. 25.2, pp. 111-131.

[14] Helmut Reisen (1996), „Managing Volatile Capital Inflows: The Experience of the 1990s”, Asian Development Review, vol. 14, no. 1, pp. 47-64.

[15] Helmut Reisen and Hélène Yèches (1993), „Time-varying estimates on the openness of the capital account in Korea and Taiwan“, Journal of Development Economics, Vol. 41. 2, pp. 285-305.

[16] On the very specific macroeconomic conditions when private capital inflows help sustain development see Ricardo Ffrench-Davis and Helmut Reisen (1998), Capital Flows and Investment Performance: Lessons from Latin America, Paris. OECD Development Centre Studies

[17] Jeffrey A. Frankel (1994), “Sterilization of Money Inflows: Difficult (Calvo) or Easy (Reisen)?”, IMF Working Paper No. 94/159. The debate focussed on Helmut Reisen (1993), “South-East Asia and the Impossible Trinity”, International Economic Insights (PIIE), pp. 21-23.

[18] Bernhard Fischer and Helmut Reisen (1992), Policies towards Capital Account Convertibility, OECD Development Centre Policy Brief No. 4. We also organised a seminar at the OECD on Financial Opening with, among others, William Branson, Daniel Cohen, Mario Draghi, Bruno Frey, Maxwell Fry, Stephany Griffith-Jones, Peter Kenen, and Jürgen von Hagen.