The Caribbean's Fiscal and Economic Challenges
The Caribbean's Fiscal and Economic Challenges
Book Reviews: Caribbean Renewal: Tackling Fiscal and Debt Challenges, by Charles Amo-Yartey and Therese Turner-Jones;
The Eastern Caribbean Economic and Currency Union: Macroeconomics and Financial Systems, by Alfred Schipke, Aliona Cebotari and Nita Thacker
Pack your bags. The vacation is over. This was the panorama of the Caribbean in 2008 and 2009, when the Great Recession emptied the islands’ beaches of tourists and dried up foreign direct investment for hotels, condos and restaurants. Current account and fiscal deficits widened in many of the Caribbean nations, and belt-tightening was the rule in households as well as governments. In some cases, the economic crisis added to government debt already accumulated from bailing out weak banks and the efforts to aid collapsing sugar and banana industries since the 1990s. According to the...
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