Letter from the Editor

摘要

Innovative economic analysis, even in these trying times, is rare. This issue offers several examples of plain good thinking that broaden the boundaries of discourse regarding the current economic crisis. First, the penetrating political scientist Robert Wade, of the London School of Economics, argues that, aside from the traditional causes cited in the crisis-such as loose monetary policy and poorly enforced regulations-global imbalances were critical in the developing problem. More to the point, global imbalances were as much a function of Western credit excess as emerging nations' desires to hold enormous currency surpluses. He offers a broad agenda about what to do.