Books
2024
July 19, 2024
Climate Change Challenges and Opportunities in Latin America and the Caribbean
Description: The analysis in the book suggests that LAC countries are facing substantial challenges related to climate change but have tools at their disposal to seize the opportunities that the climate change presents. To maximize opportunities and minimize the risks LAC countries will need to improve flexibility and adaptability of their economies. Policies aimed at supporting the reallocation of labor and capital across sectors, investing in basic skills and human capital, improving transparency and economic governance to encourage investment in technology and know-how, and creating fiscal space to manage the climate transition would help LAC countries position themselves to take advantage of the opportunities afforded by the climate transition.
April 11, 2024
Gender Equality and Economic Development in Sub-Saharan Africa
Description: Efforts to achieve gender equality will not only help sub-Saharan Africa revive its inclusive growth engine but also will ensure progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals and help address the main disruptive challenges of this century. This book explores the progress made in gender equality in the region, highlighting both the challenges and successes in areas such as legal reforms; education; health; gender-based violence; harmful practices, such as child marriage; and financial inclusion. It takes stock of initiatives towards integrating gender into core macroeconomic and structural reforms, such as through implementing gender budgeting and examines the role that fiscal and other policies can play in closing gender gaps when they are mindful of distributional impacts. Drawing from extensive research across different institutions, the book underscores the macroeconomic significance of gender equality, emphasizing its potential to drive GDP growth, enhance economic stability, reduce income inequality, and foster sustainable development. It lays out how gender gaps interact with emerging challenges, such as digitalization, and explores the impact of global megatrends, such as climate change, on gender inequality, offering strategies for inclusive policy responses—including in a context where women and girls are still carrying a disproportionate care burden that is often not captured in economic measurement. The book aims to serve as a roadmap for policymakers, stakeholders, and advocates seeking to harness the untapped potential of gender equality—for its own sake and for the region's inclusive, sustainable, and green development. It calls for concerted efforts to dismantle structural barriers, transform social norms, and prioritize gender-responsive policies to unlock the full economic potential of sub-Saharan Africa.
January 5, 2024
The IMF and the European Debt Crisis
Description: The book explores the Fund’s engagement in Europe in the aftermath of the 2008 global financial crisis, and especially after 2010. It explains how, why, and with what consequences the International Monetary Fund—along with the European Central Bank and the European Commission (together known as “the troika”)—supported adjustment programs in Greece, Ireland, Portugal, and Cyprus as well as helping to monitor Spain’s adjustment program and exploring modalities for supporting Italy. Additionally, it analyzes how the euro area developments interacted with and affected the rest of Europe, including not only eastern and southeastern Europe but also the United Kingdom, where the political fallout from post-financial crisis populism—in the form of “Brexit” from the European Union—was, in the end, the most extreme. The IMF’s European programs embroiled the Fund in numerous controversies over the exceptionally large lending, over whether or not to impose losses on private creditors, and over the mix between external financing and internal adjustment undertaken by program countries. They also required the IMF to confront longstanding questions about its governance and evenhandedness in the treatment of different segments of its membership. The crisis programs, with Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Cyprus, all revolved around debt sustainability. In the Greek case, after an intense internal debate, the IMF initially chose a program without debt reduction because it feared that such a program–even if ultimately in the interests of Greece, the client country–would trigger a panic of banks and other creditors and thus generate contagion for the rest of Europe. Learning from the Greek case, in Ireland and Portugal, the IMF pushed for debt reduction, to which the government in Ireland but not in Portugal was sympathetic. There was thus no private sector debt reduction in Ireland and Portugal. The European programs were caught up in big geopolitical debates about the appropriate role of the Fund in the aftermath of the global financial crisis. The book examines the intellectual and policy shifts that took place in the IMF as a result of the controversies about its European programs. It concludes with some reflections on how all the programs also produced genuine policy reform and held out the possibility of a return to growth and prosperity.
2023
October 27, 2023
Shocks and Capital Flows: Policy Responses in a Volatile World
Description: The high exposure of open economies to shocks makes them particularly vulnerable to volatile capital flows and advanced economy monetary policy spillovers. How should and do domestic policymakers respond? The traditional answer has been to use flexible exchange rates as a shock absorber. But flexible exchange rates may not offer full insulation when financial markets are imperfect. This book brings together recent empirical studies at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on the effectiveness of different tools in responding to such shocks. The 18 chapters in this volume provide a rich background to the recently launched Integrated Policy Framework by the IMF. They comprise assessments of countries’ actual use of different tools, as well as in-depth evaluations of their effectiveness and side effects, covering macroprudential policies, monetary policy, foreign-exchange intervention, and capital flow management policies. Many of the studies involve new data and methods to tackle the inherently difficult problems in identifying and comparing the effects of policies under different circumstances. As a result, the volume offers the reader a comprehensive, in-depth coverage of the policy-oriented empirical research that has informed the development of a new way of thinking about open-economy macroeconomics at the IMF.
October 9, 2023
Morocco’s Quest for Stronger and Inclusive Growth
Description: Throughout the past two decades, Morocco has faced several external and domestic shocks, including large swings in international oil prices, regional geopolitical tensions, severe droughts, and most recently the impact of the pandemic and the economic fallout from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Despite rough waters, the government stayed the course and remained focused not only on immediate stability, but also on the long-term needs of the Moroccan economy. This involved the adoption of a series of difficult measures, like the elimination of energy subsidies, and a strategy aimed at improving the country’s infrastructure, diversifying the production and export bases by attracting foreign investment, and modernizing the governance structure of the public administration. The road to higher and more inclusive growth, however, remains steep. Despite gains in poverty reduction, literacy and lifespans, Morocco economy continues to face a high share of inactive youth, large gaps in economic opportunities for women, a fragmented social protection system, and remaining barriers to private sector development. An ambitious reform agenda is needed to better meet the aspirations of Moroccans, by making economic growth stronger, more resilient and more inclusive, particularly to provide greater opportunities for young, women, and entrepreneurs. Morocco appears well positioned to address these challenges, and indeed, the country has recently sought to define and pursue a new “model of development”, through national debates and a more inclusive approach to reform. Significant reforms have been announced recently that revamp both the social protection system and the SOEs business model. This book draws lessons from the reforms Morocco has implemented in the past few decades and charts a course for Morocco by addressing key areas for reform.
August 17, 2023
Handbook on Measuring Digital Trade: Second edition
Description: Digital technologies have made it increasingly feasible for buyers and sellers to place and receive orders on a global scale. They also enable the instantaneous remote delivery of services directly into businesses and homes, including internationally. The Handbook on Measuring Digital Trade sets out a conceptual and measurement framework for digital trade that aligns with the broader standards for macroeconomic statistics. It aims to help statistical compilers to address policymakers’ needs for statistical evidence on digital trade. It includes extensive compilation guidance, drawing upon substantive inputs and case studies from both developed and developing economies and covering a variety of survey and non-survey sources. This second edition of the Handbook builds upon the concepts set out in the first edition, published in 2019. Focusing on cross-border digitally ordered goods and services, on digitally delivered services, and on the role played by digital intermediation platforms the Handbook provides a framework and template for the compilation of internationally comparable statistics on digital trade.
July 6, 2023
India’s Financial System: Building the Foundation for Strong and Sustainable Growth
Description: India has experienced a prolonged period of strong economic growth since it embarked on major structural reforms and economic liberalization in 1991, with real GDP growth averaging about 6.6 percent during 1991–2019. Millions have been lifted out of poverty. With a population of 1.4 billion and about 7 percent of the world economic output (in purchasing power parity terms), India is the third largest economy—after the US and China. As such, developments in India have significant global and regional implications, including via spillovers through international trade and global supply chains. At the same time, India’s economic development has not been linear and has been impacted by external and domestic shocks, some directly related to the financial sector. Indeed, India was not spared from external regional and global shocks, such as the Asian financial crisis (1997), the global financial crisis (2008), and more recently, the devastating impact of the COVID-19 pandemic (from 2020) and the war in Ukraine (2022). The economy has also been hit by domestic shocks. The book covers how to strengthen the financial system to support growth and reduce vulnerabilities by discussing the linkages between the financial sector and growth, improvements in bank lending to foster productivity, and measures to further develop India’s corporate bond market. The book reflects on India’s success in leveraging digitalization to foster financial inclusion and highlights how the financial system can help to address climate issues. This book digs deeper into the various facets of India’s financial sector to understand its strengths and opportunities and to elicit policy actions that could help the financial sector better support India’s growth potential.
May 12, 2023
Countering the Financing of Terrorism: Good Practices to Enhance Effectiveness
Description: IMF member countries face significant challenges when it comes to improving the effectiveness of their fight against terrorism financing. This book is intended to assist anti-money laundering and combating terrorism financing (AML/CFT) policymakers and practitioners in identifying key challenges and good practices for strengthening the effectiveness of counter terrorism financing frameworks. The book’s six chapters cover (1) improving the understanding of terrorist financing risks; (2) the role of the private sector in detecting and disrupting terrorist financing activities; (3) the production and use of financial intelligence to counter terrorism and terrorist financing; (4) investigating, prosecuting, and sanctioning terrorism financiers; (5) terrorism-related targeted financial sanctions; and (6) international cooperation in combating the financing of terrorism. The book presents contributions by experts from the IMF, United Nations, Egmont Group of Financial Intelligence Units, INTERPOL, and Europol.
April 4, 2023
Data for a Greener World: A Guide for Practitioners and Policymakers
Description: The book presents a structured discussion of measuring the key economic and financial dimensions of climate change. It combines economic theory and analysis with real world examples of how climate data can be constructed for different country settings, based on existing climate science and economic data. The book will serve as a reference point for the IMF’s Climate Change Indicators Dashboard (CID). A guiding principle of the book is that there are important climate data gaps, but also practical and innovative approaches to close many of them. The book discusses how to track greenhouse gas emissions by production and consumption (Chapters 1-2), which lead to physical risks (Chapters 3-4) and transition risks (Chapters 5-7) and conclude with cross-border dimensions of climate risks (Chapters 8-9).
2022
December 23, 2022
South Asia's Path to Resilient Growth
Description: South Asia’s Path to Resilient Growth highlights the remarkable development progress in South Asia and how the region can advance in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. Steps include a renewed push toward greater trade and financial openness, while responding proactively to the distributional impact and dislocation associated with this structural transformation. Promoting a green and digital recovery remains important. The book explores ways to accelerate the income convergence process in the region, leveraging on the still-large potential demographic dividend in most of the countries. These include greater economic diversification and export sophistication, trade and foreign direct investment liberalization and participation in global value chains amid shifting regional and global conditions, financial development, and investment in human capital.