Delivering on Africa’s Dreams
By David Lipton
Across sub-Saharan Africa, a visit to a school offers both a vision of hope for the future, and a reminder of the difficulties in attaining that vision. My recent visit to Sierra Leone and Niger brought this duality into sharp focus. (more…)
Chart of the WeekHigher Growth. Lower Crime?
Central America remains one of the world’s most violent regions, where about 4.5 percent of the world’s homicides occur. The region has only about 0.5 percent of the world's population. (more…)
Finding Solid Footing for the Global Economy
عربي, Español, Français, 日本語, Português, Русский
As the Group of Twenty industrialized and emerging market economies (G-20) finance ministers and central bank governors gather in Riyadh this week, they face an uncertain economic landscape.
After disappointing growth in 2019, we began to see signs of stabilization and risk reduction, including the Phase 1 U.S.-China trade deal. In January, the IMF projected growth to strengthen from 2.9 percent in 2019 to 3.3 percent in 2020 and 3.4 percent in 2021. This projected uptick in growth is dependent on improved performance in some emerging market and developing economies. (more…)
Fiscal Policies For Women’s Economic Empowerment
By Stefania Fabrizio, Daniel Gurara and Lisa Kolovich
Making sure that opportunities to enter the workforce are fair and rewarding for women benefits everyone. Yet, the average female workforce participation rate across countries is still 20 percentage points lower than the male rate, largely because gender gaps in wages and access to opportunities, such as education, stubbornly persist. (more…)
Construction Activity Can Signal When Credit Booms Go Wrong
By Deniz Igan
In Spain, private sector credit as a share of GDP almost doubled between 2000 and 2007. This increase was accompanied by a boom in housing prices—which doubled in real terms over the same period. The economy as a whole also grew at a record pace. (more…)
Public Opinion on Automation
By Carlos Mulas-Granados, Richard Varghese and Vizhdan Boranova
Tired of reading articles about how a robot will take your job? We’ve all heard horror stories that foresee the devastating consequences that automation will have on people’s working lives—yet much less attention has been devoted to what workers actually think. (more…)
Chart of the WeekSouth Africa: Bridging the Income Divide
By IMFBlog
South Africa suffers among the highest levels of inequality in the world. As our Chart of the Week shows, the country’s wealth is concentrated in the upper levels of society. The top 20 percent of the population holds over 68 percent of income, while the poorest 40 percent possess only 7 percent of income. (more…)
Data PointsInterest Rate Controls, Capital Flow Restrictions, and Other Potentially Costly Financial Market Regulatory Tools
By Etibar Jafarov, Rodolfo Maino, and Marco Pani
With the surge in public debt in the wake of the global financial crisis, financial repression—administrative restrictions on interest rates, credit allocation, capital movements, and other financial operations—has come back on the agenda. (more…)
Assessing Climate-Change Risk by Stress Testing for Financial Resilience
By Tobias Adrian, James Morsink, and Liliana Schumacher
عربي, 中文, Español, Français, 日本語, Português, Русский
As society braces for the potential havoc a changing climate could induce, it’s vital to gauge the range of shocks that the economy may soon endure. One way to quantify the effects of the potentially systemic shocks that could ripple through the financial system is to administer “stress tests”—a well-designed analytical process that has, for decades, been used by the IMF, World Bank and financial supervisors for detailed scenario planning to prevent future financial crises. (more…)
