The Global Expansion: Still Strong but Less Even, More Fragile, Under Threat
July 16, 2018
Versions in عربي, Baˈhasa indoneˈsia, 中文, Español, Français, 日本語, Português, Русский
The escalation of trade tensions is the greatest near-term threat to global growth (photo: wildpixel/Getty Images by iStock)
Amid rising tensions over international trade, the broad global expansion that began roughly two years ago has plateaued and become less balanced. […]
An Imbalance in Global Banks’ Dollar Funding
By John Caparusso, Yingyuan Chen, Hideo Hashimoto, David Jones, Will Kerry and Aki Yokoyama
June 12, 2018
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The US Treasury is issuing more T-bills, potentially putting upward pressure on the interest rates non-US banks must pay for short-term dollar funding (photo: Jennifer Hack/KRT/Newscom)
For companies and investors outside the United States, the dollar is often the currency of choice. Surprisingly, though, US banks play only a limited role in lending dollars to international borrowers. Most of the $7 trillion in banks’ dollar lending outside the United States is handled by banks based in Europe, Japan and elsewhere. […]
Fed Tightening May Squeeze Portfolio Flows to Emerging Markets
By Robin Koepke
December 14, 2017
Versions in 中文 (Chinese), Español (Spanish), Français (French), 日本語 (Japanese), Русский (Russian)
Derivatives traders in Singapore: Tighter Federal Reserve monetary policy is likely to reduce overseas purchases of emerging market stocks and bonds (photo: Caro/Rupert Oberhaeuser/Newscom)
A key question facing global investors today is what impact the US Federal Reserve’s monetary policy normalization process will have on capital flows to emerging markets. The IMF’s new model estimates show that normalization—raising the policy interest rate and shrinking the balance sheet—will likely reduce portfolio inflows by about $70 billion over the next two years, which compares with average annual inflows of $240 billion since 2010. […]
The Lowdown on U.S. Core Inflation
By Yasser Abdih
There was a time when U.S. central bankers worried that inflation was too high, and they tried to bring it down. Now the opposite is true: the Federal Reserve is concerned that inflation has remained stubbornly low, and it’s trying to boost prices. The reason: persistently low inflation raises the risk that prices will actually start to decline, a dangerous condition known as deflation. That’s bad news because it makes people less willing to borrow and spend—anticipating lower prices, consumers will put off spending—and could also lead to a fall in wages. […]
What Future for Unconventional Monetary Policies
How quickly should the United States tighten monetary policy and exit from quantitative easing? Is the neutral real interest rate lower than before the crisis? Should we raise inflation targets? What can we learn from the unconventional policies that emerging markets adopted during the crisis? Are we entering an environment of global deflation? And if so, can the existing central bank toolkit stave off that threat?
Seven years after the crisis, the effects of unconventional monetary policies continue to be a matter of debate. There is little consensus not only about the effectiveness of these policies in promoting aggregate demand, but also about possible unintended side effects on financial stability.
“To Lean or Not to Lean?” That is the Question
By Stefan Laseen, Andrea Pescatori, and Jarkko Turunen
Academics and policy-makers alike have long struggled with the question of whether to use monetary policy to dampen asset price booms – whether to “lean against the wind” or not. Can officials identify emerging asset price bubbles, what are the implications of bursting them, and is monetary policy the appropriate response to potential bubbles? These questions have become even more important to the policy debate in the wake of the global financial crisis, which was preceded by an unsustainable boom in sub-prime mortgage lending and housing prices.
Given over six years of near zero policy interest rates, should the U.S. Fed now use interest rates to lean against potential financial stability risks that may have built up?
U.S. Monetary Policy: Avoiding Dark Corners
By Ali Alichi, Douglas Laxton, Jarkko Turunen, and Hou Wang
A few weeks ago, the Fund suggested that the Federal Reserve could defer its first increase in the policy rate until it sees greater signs of wage or price inflation, with a gradual increase in the federal funds rate thereafter. Such a monetary policy strategy could help avoid the “dark corners” in which, as Olivier Blanchard has argued, small shocks can have potentially large effects. In this blog and accompanying working paper, we expand upon this idea. We also outline the potential benefits of an expanded communications toolkit.
Challenges Ahead: Managing Spillovers
By Olivier Blanchard, Luc Laeven, and Esteban Vesperoni
The last five years have been a reminder of the importance of interconnections and risks in the global economy. They have triggered intense discussions on the optimal way to combine fiscal, monetary, and financial policies to deal with spillovers, and on the need and the scope for coordination of such policies.
The IMF’s 15th Jacques Polak Annual Research Conference, which took place in Washington DC on November 13 and 14, 2014, focused on Cross-Border Spillovers, and took stock of what we know and do not know. The summary below picks and chooses some papers, and does not do justice to the full set of papers presented and discussed at the conference. They can all be downloaded, and videos of each session are available, at www.imf.org/external/np/res/seminars/2014/arc.
Reduced Speed, Rising Challenges: IMF Outlook for Latin America and the Caribbean
(Version in Español and Português)
The prospects for global growth have brightened in recent months, led by a stronger recovery in the advanced economies. Yet in Latin America and the Caribbean, growth will probably continue to slow, although some countries will do better than others. We analyze the challenges facing the region in our latest Regional Economic Outlook and discuss how policymakers can best deal with them.