Devika Dutt

King's College London | KCL · International Development Institute

This article examines the extent to which the latest wave of trade and investment treaties has impacted the fiscal stability of the world’s nations. We construct two new measures of trade liberalization based on the importance of a country in the global network of trade and investment treaties, namely the number of trade treaty links and the hub co...

This paper explores whether there has been a change in International Monetary Fund (IMF) policy advice and conditions in its loan programmes and Article IV surveillance by examining the 148 country reports for IMF programmes in 2020, in the context of significant shifts in its global macroeconomic policy framework during the COVID-19 pandemic. It d...

As the issuers of the global reserve currency, the U.S. dollar, the Federal Reserve and the U.S. Treasury are the de facto international lender of last resort (ILLR) institutions in the global economy. Access to emergency liquidity in the U.S. Dollar is the most effective aspect of the global financial safety net. However, only some countries have...

This paper evaluates the evidence as regards the extent to which trade liberalization has led to a decline in tariff revenue, total tax revenue, government expenditure, and government debt. Conventional theory generally predicts that when tariff losses do occur, they may be recouped through better forms of taxation – though a more sophisticated bod...

Central Banks around the world increasingly intervene in the foreign exchange market for a variety of reasons, such as providing a protective buffer in the event of a sudden stop or reversal of capital flows. As a result, there has been an unprecedented accumulation of foreign exchange reserves on the balance sheets of central banks around the worl...

By providing an easy and elegant “answer” to the complex process of development, albeit a wrong one, Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and James Robinson’s rise to prominence has lent support to a very particular understanding of development that is now prevalent in the discipline. It also provided an easy, unfalsifi able, and arguably racist narrative...

The World Health Organization (WHO) set up the messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) technology transfer programme in June 2021 with a development hub in South Africa and 15 partner vaccine producers in middle-income countries. The goal was to support the sustainable development of and access to life-saving vaccines for people in these countries as a m...

Building on previous work, this paper examines the extent to which the latest wave of trade and investment treaties have impacted the fiscal stability of the world's nations. By definition, trade liberalization reduces the amount of tariff revenue, which is a non-trivial component of the fiscal balance of many developing countries. We confirm this...

Are publicly oriented financial institutions stabilizing forces in the modern financial world, and if so, at what cost? In recent decades, we show that publicly oriented banks contribute to financial stability by lending less pro-cyclically and even, in some cases, counter-cyclically, than did their private banking counterparts. Further, while earl...

Central Banks around the world increasingly intervene in the foreign exchange market for a variety of reasons, such as maintaining exchange rate stability. In fact, research shows that central banks can lean against the macroeconomic policy trilemma through maintaining reserves and intervening in the foreign exchange market, and secure policy space...

This paper examines whether greater prevalence of government-owned banks leads to qualitatively different outcomes. By reviewing the extensive literature on government owned banks, the paper determines whether greater government participation in the financial system leads to greater financial stability, and greater provision of finance for welfare...