Investment through global funds increases year on year. But how and where are global funds’ portfolios allocated? How and which recipient countries, underlying investors, and policymakers benefit? This column argues that global funds in fact represent restrictive investment practises. If we want as many countries, investors and companies to benefit as possible, we must aim to change global funds’ organisational structures and thereby managers’ behaviour.

Market conditions in Europe have improved of late – but this column reminds us that improvement on the turmoil of 2011 is hardly difficult. It argues that Europe’s fundamental design problems still remain unresolved and that leaders should use the market lull to prepare the next steps.

How interconnected are finance, trade, and economic growth? This column looks to the past in search of an answer. Examining economies that traded across the Atlantic, it finds that finance and trade reinforced one another between 1880 and 1914 but these links were absent in the post-war period. Financial development has been strongly related to growth throughout the last 130 years, whereas trade had a direct effect on growth only after 1945.

Conventional wisdom states that financial globalisation has been advancing since the mid-1980s, particularly in developing countries. It also states that this should have fostered international portfolio diversification and consumption smoothing. But this column takes a closer look at the data and argues that neither financial globalisation nor portfolio diversification has grown significantly in emerging markets over that period.

The success of the mobile money programme in Kenya – where money is exchanged via mobile phone – has been phenomenal. In four years, a country with only 850 bank branches has seen the number of outlets providing the service grow from 4,000 to 25,000. People have access to formal finance as never before. This column studies 3,000 households between 2008 and 2010, tracking this social and economic transformation.

What makes the global crisis global? This column argues that the interdependence of the global economy, brought about by financial linkages between developed countries as well as goods trade ties with developing countries, has made the global crisis the first global recession in decades.

Will financial regionalism damagingly fragment the global financial architecture precisely at the time when sturdy system-wide management is needed? This column points to the world trading system’s engagement with regional trade agreements as a source of lessons for how to harmonise regional and global approaches to international finance.

Foreign-currency loans in Eastern Europe are seen as a major threat to financial stability. Why then are they so widespread? This column presents evidence from over 100,000 loans made by a Bulgarian bank between 2003 and 2007. It finds that one-third of foreign-currency loans were actually requested in local currency by the firm, suggesting that banks are pushing them.

The fallout from global crisis has left many calling for economy-wide, macro-prudential policies, such as taxes on capital flows and capital controls. This column argues that the case for such measures is ambiguous at best – the excessive borrowing on which they are predicated is not a general and robust feature of financially developed and integrated economies.