Books
2018
April 4, 2018
Race to the Next Income Frontier: How Senegal and Other Low-Income Countries Can Reach the Finish Line
Description: Through 18 chapters, this book draws on policy lessons from successful countries that have managed to overcome political economy constraints and reach upper-middle-income emerging market economy status to examine how Senegal can achieve per capita growth rates of four to five percent per year over a 20-year period, as well as lessons for other low-income countries. Contributors working in academia, civil society, and government in Senegal, as well as at the World Bank, in peer countries like Mauritius, Morocco, and Seychelles, and the International Monetary Fund, address creating a sound, balanced, and efficient fiscal framework through new revenue-raising measures, expenditure rationalization, and more efficient public investment; promoting an inclusive and deeper financial sector; relieving constraints on doing business and promoting private investment, including foreign direct investment; and achieving high, sustained, and inclusive growth. They discuss Senegal's macroeconomic environment and what it means to be an upper-middle-income emerging market economy, including the country's industrial framework, the Plan Senegal emergent growth targets, and dimensions of inclusive growth; revenue mobilization, public expenditure efficiency and rationalization, and debt sustainability; ways to make Senegal's financial system more stable, deeper, and more inclusive in the context of the West African Economic and Monetary Union; aspects of structural reform in the country and ways to implement reforms to achieve growth; and social inclusion and protection in Senegal.
2017
December 1, 2017
Shifting Commodity Markets in a Globalized World
Description: A survey of the complex and intertwined set of forces behind the various commodity markets and the interplay between these markets and the global economy. Summarizes a rich set of facts combined with in-depth analyses distillated in a nontechnical manner. Includes discussion of structural trends behind commodities markets, their future implications, and policy implications.
November 13, 2017
Unleashing Growth and Strengthening Resilience in the Caribbean
Description: This book provides a diagnosis of the central economic and financial challenges facing Caribbean policymakers and offers broad policy recommendations for promoting a sustained and inclusive increase in economic well-being. The analysis highlights the need for Caribbean economies to make a concerted effort to break the feedback loops between weak macroeconomic fundamentals, notably pertaining to fiscal positions and financial sector strains, and structural impediments, such as high electricity costs, limited financial deepening, violent crime, and brain drain, which have depressed private investment and growth. A recurring theme in the book is the need for greater regional coordination in finding solutions to address the Caribbean’s shared and intertwined macroeconomic and structural challenges. The analysis suggests that strengthening regional and global market integration of Caribbean economies would provide an impetus to sustained growth in incomes and jobs. Greater regional and global economic integration would also facilitate structural transformation and a shift toward new economic activities, resulting in more diversified and less vulnerable economies. A central challenge for the Caribbean is thus to come together as a region, overcome the limitations posed by size, and garner the benefits of globalization. Efforts should build on existing regional arrangements; accelerating progress in implementing these agreements would stimulate trade. Policymakers could also promote deeper integration with Latin America and the rest of the world by pursuing new trade agreements, leveraging current agreements more effectively, or deepening them to include areas beyond traditional trade issues, and developing port and transport infrastructure.
November 1, 2017
Digital Revolutions in Public Finance
Description: Digitization promises to reshape fiscal policy by transforming how governments collect, process, share, and act on information. More and higher-quality information can improve not only policy design for tax and spending, but also systems for their management, including tax administration and compliance, delivery of public services, administration of social programs, public financial management, and more. Countries must chart their own paths to effectively balance the potential benefits against the risks and challenges, including institutional and capacity constraints, privacy concerns, and new avenues for fraud and evasion. Support for this book and the conference on which it is based was provided by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation “Click Download on the top right corner for your free copy..."
April 10, 2017
Financial Integration in Latin America: A New Strategy for a New Normal
Description: With growth slowing across much of the Latin America as a result of the end of the commodity supercycle and economic rebalancing in China, as well as fragmentation of the international banking system, policies to stimulate growth are needed. This book examines the financial landscapes of seven Latin American economies—Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Panama, Peru, and Uruguay—and makes a case for them to pursue regional financial integration. Chapters set out the benefits to the region of financial integration, the barriers to cross-border activity in banks, insurance companies, pension funds, and capital markets, as well as recommendations to address these barriers. Finally, the volume makes the case that regional integration now could be a step toward global integration in the short term.
April 7, 2017
Fiscal Politics
Description: Two main themes of the book are that (1) politics can distort optimal fiscal policy through elections and through political fragmentation, and (2) rules and institutions can attenuate the negative effects of this dynamic. The book has three parts: part 1 (9 chapters) outlines the problems; part 2 (6 chapters) outlines how institutions and fiscal rules can offer solutions; and part 3 (4 chapters) discusses how multilevel governance frameworks can help.
March 30, 2017
From Great Depression to Great Recession: The Elusive Quest for International Policy Cooperation
Description: The global financial crisis and the ensuing Great Recession raised concerns about adjustment fatigue, deflation, currency wars, and secular stagnation that presented a sense of déjà vu: similar concerns had arisen at the time of the Great Depression and at the end of World War II. As with earlier crises, these concerns prompted calls for greater international policy cooperation—both to achieve a sustainable recovery from the crisis and to prevent future crises. This volume compiles papers from a 2015 symposium of eminent scholars convened by the IMF to discuss how history can inform current debates about the functioning and challenges of the international monetary system. An introductory chapter sets the stage for the other chapters in the volume by giving a broad overview of the performance of the international monetary system over the past century, highlighting the key events and challenges that shaped it. Subsequent sections look at historical antecedents of today’s challenges, describe how the modern international monetary system has been—and continues to be—shaped through international financial diplomacy, provide a present-day perspective, and examine the analytics of international policy coordination.
February 15, 2017
Women, Work, and Economic Growth: Leveling the Playing Field
Description: Women make up a little over half of the world’s population, but their contribution to measured economic activity and growth is far below its potential. Despite significant progress in recent decades, labor markets across the world remain divided along gender lines, and progress toward gender equality seems to have stalled. The challenges of growth, job creation, and inclusion are closely intertwined. This volume brings together key research by IMF economists on issues related to gender and macroeconomics. In addition to providing policy prescriptions and case studies from IMF member countries, the chapters also look at the gender gap from an economic point of view.
January 14, 2017
Modernizing China: Investing in Soft Infrastructure
Description:
China is at a critical juncture in its economic transformation as it tries to rebalance what is generally seen as an exhausted growth model. A unifying theme across the reforms that will deliver this transformation is that it can no longer be achieved by raising the amount of physical investment and government direction of resource allocation. Instead China is building a new set of policy frameworks that will allow markets to function more effectively—not unfettered markets, but markets that work efficiently, in line with broad social and other policy goals, and in a sustainable way. Hence, China is now building a new soft infrastructure, that is, the institutional plumbing that underpins and guides the functioning of markets as the key organizing principle toward achieving sustained economic and social progress. Against this background, this volume provides policymakers, academics, and the public with valuable information about policies and institutions in China today. It also looks at the road ahead and key principles that can help China in navigating it. The book focuses on issues crucial in the country’s transformation, such as tax policy and administration, social security, state-owned enterprise reform, medium-term expenditure frameworks, the role of local government finances, capital account liberalization, and renminbi internationalization. As China moves toward a more price-based allocation of resources, strengthening monetary policy frameworks and financial sector regulation will be particularly important in channeling resources to the most productive sectors and minimizing the risks of financial sector stress. Also, upgrading statistical frameworks will be critical for macroeconomic policymaking and investors.
Visit : http://0-www-elibrary-imf-org.library.svsu.edu/page/modernizing-china
2016
November 4, 2016
IMF Financial Operations 2016
Description: IMF Financial Operations 2016 provides a broad introduction to how the IMF fulfills its mission through its financial activities. It covers the financial structure and operations of the IMF and also provides background detail of the financial statements for the IMF's activities during the most recent financial year. This publication (currently in its third edition) updates a previous report entitled Financial Organization and Operations of the IMF, first published in 1986 and last issued in 2001 (the sixth edition). That 2001 report reflected the seismic shifts in the global economy and in the IMF's structure and operations that occurred after the fall of the Soviet Union and the various currency and financial crises of the 1990s. This revised and updated report covers more recent developments, including reform of the IMF’s income model, measures taken in response to the global financial crisis of 2007–09, and the institutional reforms aimed at ensuring that the IMF's governance structure evolves in line with developments in the global economy.