Finance Development June 2018

This paper focuses on smart policies that can alleviate the short-term pain of technological disruption and pave the way for long-term gain. As computing power improves dramatically and more and more people around the world participate in the digital economy, care should be taken about how to devise policies that will allow us to fully exploit the digital revolution’s benefits while minimizing job dislocation. Digital technology will spread further, and efforts to ignore it or legislate against it will likely fail. Even with short-term dislocations, reorganizing the economy around revolutionary technologies generates huge long-term benefits. The digital revolution should be accepted and improved rather than ignored and repressed. Given the global reach of digital technology, and the risk of a race to the bottom, there is a need for policy cooperation like that of global financial markets and sea and air traffic. The history of earlier general-purpose technologies demonstrates that even with short-term dislocations, reorganizing the economy around revolutionary technologies generates huge long-term benefits.

This paper focuses on smart policies that can alleviate the short-term pain of technological disruption and pave the way for long-term gain. As computing power improves dramatically and more and more people around the world participate in the digital economy, care should be taken about how to devise policies that will allow us to fully exploit the digital revolution’s benefits while minimizing job dislocation. Digital technology will spread further, and efforts to ignore it or legislate against it will likely fail. Even with short-term dislocations, reorganizing the economy around revolutionary technologies generates huge long-term benefits. The digital revolution should be accepted and improved rather than ignored and repressed. Given the global reach of digital technology, and the risk of a race to the bottom, there is a need for policy cooperation like that of global financial markets and sea and air traffic. The history of earlier general-purpose technologies demonstrates that even with short-term dislocations, reorganizing the economy around revolutionary technologies generates huge long-term benefits.

This book addresses key issues in corporate finance and explores them from financial development and financial stability perspectives in emerging markets. Emerging economies are susceptible to rapidly changing financial sectors and products as well as financial upheavals. In this light, the growing interdependence of states and capital markets, and the risk of crises have an impact on the financing of firms. The chapters in this book highlight how companies and policies in emerging markets are affected and deal with the current post-crisis world. By combining academic and industry insights, the critical issues in corporate finance, financial development, and the preparedness of emerging markets are explored.

Finance & Development, June 2018

International Financial Statistics, Database & Browser, June 2018

This 2019 Article IV Consultation with People’s Republic of China highlights that after the slowdown in 2018, reflecting financial regulatory strengthening and softening external demand, growth stabilized in early 2019. Financial deleveraging and reduced interconnectedness between banks and non-banks have helped contain the build-up of financial risks, but vulnerabilities remain elevated and progress on rebalancing is mixed. While a moderate slowdown is expected in 2019, uncertainty around trade tensions remains high and risks are tilted to the downside. Successfully shifting from high-speed to high-quality growth in a highly uncertain environment requires stabilizing the economy amid rising trade tensions while continuing with deleveraging and strengthening rebalancing. It is important to improve external policies and frameworks by working constructively with trading partners to better address shortcomings and enable a trading system that can more readily adapt to economic changes in the international environment.

Dispute Resolution in Islamic Finance addresses how best to handle disputes within Islamic finance. It examines how they can be resolved in a less confrontational manner and ensure such disagreements are settled in a just and fair way. There has been little focus on how disputes within Islamic finance are resolved. As a result, many of these disputes are resolved through litigation, notwithstanding that the various jurisdictions and court systems are generally poorly equipped to handle such matters. This book addresses this gap in our knowledge by focusing on five centres of Islamic finance: the United Kingdom, the United States of America, Malaysia, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Before exploring these countries in detail, the book considers the issues of the choice of law within Islamic finance as well the prevailing forms of dispute resolution in this form of finance. The book brings together a group of leading scholars who are all specialists on the subject in the countries they examine. It is a key resource for students and researchers of Islamic finance, and aimed at lawyers, finance professionals, industry practitioners, consultancy firms, and academics.

Global growth has eased but remains robust and is projected to reach 3.1 percent in 2018. It is expected to edge down in the next two years, to 2.9 percent by 2020, as global slack dissipates, trade and investment moderate, and financing conditions tighten. Growth in advanced economies is predicted to decelerate toward potential rates as monetary policy normalizes and the effects of U.S. fiscal stimulus wane. In emerging market and developing economies (EMDEs), growth in commodity importers will remain robust, while the rebound in commodity exporters is projected to mature during the next two years. Progress in per capita income growth will be uneven, however, remaining particularly subdued in Sub-Saharan Africa. Risks to the outlook remain tilted to the downside. The possibilities of escalating trade protectionism and disorderly financial market movements have increased substantially in recent months, and the risk of heightened geopolitical tensions continues to cloud the outlook. EMDE policymakers need to rebuild monetary and fiscal policy buffers and be prepared for rising global interest rates and possible episodes of financial market turbulence. In the longer run, EMDEs need to tackle ongoing structural challenges and boost potential growth, by promoting competitiveness, adaptability to technological change, and trade openness. Global Economic Prospects is a World Bank Group Flagship Report that examines global economic developments and prospects, with a special focus on emerging market and developing countries, on a semiannual basis (in January and June). The January edition includes in-depth analyses of topical policy challenges faced by these economies, while the June edition contains shorter analytical pieces.