The Impact of the Financial Crisis on Developing Countries

The crisis has surged across the public-private boundary, as the hit to private firms’ balance sheets has now imposed heavy new demands on the public sector’s finances. It has surged across national borders within the developed world, as the people of Iceland know all too well. And nowthere are reasons to fear that the crisis will swamp emerging markets and other developingcountries, cutting into the considerable economic progress of recent years. The developing world – what it has recently achieved, how these achievements are now at risk, and what it must now do – is the focus of this paper. Understandably, perhaps, until now the focus of policymakers has mostly been on the actions of the governments at the epicenter of the crisis, as well as those of other developed countries like Japan and Korea. This brief discussion of the dynamics of global growth in 2002-07, focusing on the mutually reinforcing booms in the developed and developing world. It also how all this growth began to unravel in 2007-08, starting with the US housing crisis. how we can respond to the crisis to ensure that the costs to the developing world are as small as possible