Abstract
This issue of the IMF Research Bulletin opens with a letter from the new editor, Rabah Arezki. The Research Summaries are a "Primer on 'Global Liquidity'" (Eugenio Cerutti, Stijn Claessens, and Lev Ratnovski); and "Trade Integration adn Business Cycle Synchronization" (Kevin Cheng, Romain Duval, and Dulani Senevirante). The Q&A column looks at "Seven Questions on the Global Housing Markets" (Hites Ahir, Heedon Kang, and Prakash Loungani). September 2014 issue of the Bulletin also includes updates on IMF Working Papers, Staff Discussion Notes, and Recommended Readings from the IMF Bookstore, as well as special announcements on new staff publications and the Fifteenth Annual Jacques Polak Research Conference. Also included is information on the latest issue of �IMF Economic Review� with a link to an article by Paul Krugman.
The Journal of International Money and Finance recently published a special issue entitled “Understanding International Commodity Price Fluctuations” co-edited by Rabah Arezki (IMF), Prakash Loungani (IMF), Rick van der Ploeg (Oxford University), and Anthony J. Venables (Oxford University). The papers were presented at a conference in Washington, D.C., September 20-21, 2013, organized jointly by the Research Department of the International Monetary Fund and the Oxford Centre for the Analysis of Resource Rich Economies at the University of Oxford. The special issue addresses three key questions (i) Are commodity prices increasingly being driven by financial speculation?; (ii) Do newer techniques to forecast commodity prices beat a random walk? (iii) What are the economic and environmental impacts of new sources of energy supply?