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This article focuses on United States Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, whose term ends in January 2006. At this year's meeting of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, a collection of central bankers and economists, distinguished even by the elevated standards of Jackson Hole, Wyoming paid tribute to Alan Greenspan's 18 years as chairman of the Federal Reserve. Greenspan gave warning that an unusually long period of economic stability might have encouraged investors to accept lower risk premiums and thus inflated the prices of assets, such as shares and homes. Moreover, Mr Greenspan, who until recently gave short shrift to the idea of a housing bubble in America, said that the property boom was an "imbalance" and that prices of homes could fall. He argued that in future the Fed will need to pay more attention to asset prices. Despite Mr Greenspan's caution, the gathering preferred to focus on his past performance. His chief examiners were Alan Blinder (a former vice-chairman of the Fed) and Ricardo Reis, both of Princeton University, whose paper concluded that "he has a legitimate claim to being the greatest central banker who ever lived". According to Messrs Blinder and Reis, the main ingredients of Mr Greenspan's tenure have been intellectual flexibility, scepticism of economic models and forecasts and a preference for discretion over formal policy rules such as inflation targeting. Mr Greenspan's Fed sees monetary policy as risk management, looking not only at the most likely path for the economy but at all the possible paths it might follow. In any case, Mr Greenspan's words of caution at Jackson Hole were surely an attempt to lean against the current housing boom. Perhaps he is showing more intellectual flexibility on how to respond to asset prices than Messrs Blinder and Reis give him credit for.

The article offers policy suggestions for economic growth in developing countries. Over the past 15 years or so, economists have developed a long list of now-familiar remedies for developing countries hoping to grow their way to prosperity. This "Washington Consensus" includes the removal of trade protection and the introduction of deregulation, as well as fiscal and monetary discipline. Meanwhile, other economists have suggested that development depends not on specific policies but on "institutional" factors, such as a respect for property rights, which constrain the powers of the state. Two studies argue that institutional overhaul and broad economic reforms are not necessary to spur economic growth. In one of these papers, Edward Glaeser, a Harvard economist, and three co-authors question several prominent studies that treat institutions as a wellspring of development. Researchers at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government looked at 83 instances between 1957 and 1992 in which annual gross domestic product growth increased by at least two percentage points and the higher growth was sustained for at least eight years. These bursts of growth were not normally preceded by a big shift in policy, or by full-blown economic and political reforms--such as liberalisation or a move towards democracy. What struck the authors was the humble nature of the initial triggers of growth. These usually consist of nothing more than relaxing specific constraints on private activity.

The article focuses on the newly formed Commonwealth of Independent States, which was launched by three Slav republics, Russia, Ukraine, and Belorussia, in the Belorussian capital, Minsk, on December 8, 1991. It has already done two valuable jobs. One was to provide the means of a quick, dignified death for Russia. The Commonwealth's other use has been to offer a forum for resolving, or at least discussing, the problems bequeathed by Russia to its successor states. A couple of the most pressing issues have already been settled, on paper anyway.