By Antoinette Sayeh, Jiro Honda, Carolina Renteria, Vincent Tang International Women’s Day, March 8, marks a year from the start of widespread lockdowns in response to COVID-19. As an IMF blog warned back in July, women have borne the economic and social brunt of the pandemic. With many governments preparing budgets for the next fiscal […]
Tag: pandemic
The Evidence Is in on Negative Interest Rate Policies
By Luis Brandao-Marques and Gaston Gelos عربي, 中文, Français, 日本語, Русский Interest rates are low, and “lower for longer” has become something of a mantra among policy makers, regulators, and other market watchers. But negative interest rates raise an entirely new set of questions. After eight years of experience with negative interest rate policies, the initial skepticism (paying interest […]
Staying Afloat: New Measures to Support European Businesses
By Alfred Kammer and Laura Papi Français Much of Europe rang in the start of 2021 with new lockdowns and weak economic activity. This same period saw the roll out of effective vaccines. While the end of the pandemic will remain a race between the virus and vaccines, there is now light at the end […]
The Haves and Have-nots Of the Digital Age
By Gita Bhatt Accelerated by the pandemic, the digital future is coming at us faster than ever before, and maybe faster than we can imagine. In this issue, we explore the possible consequences—the good, the bad, and the gray. For millions, technology has been a lifeline, changing the way we work, learn, shop, and entertain […]
The Great Divergence: A Fork in the Road for the Global Economy
By Kristalina Georgieva As G20 finance ministers and central bank governors meet virtually this week, the world continues to climb back from the worst recession in peacetime since the Great Depression. The IMF recently projected global GDP growth at 5.5 per cent this year and 4.2 per cent in 2022. But it is going to […]
Structural Factors and Central Bank Credibility Limit Inflation Risks
By Gita Gopinath After ending last year with unexpectedly strong vaccine success and hope that the pandemic and economic distress it caused would recede, we woke up to the reality of new virus variants and the unpredictable, winding road that it can lead the world down. Something similar has happened with the discourse on inflation. […]
Why Climate Change Vulnerability Is Bad for Sovereign Credit Ratings
By Serhan Cevik and João Tovar Jalles Climate change has made the world a riskier place. The destruction wrought by heatwaves, droughts, hurricanes, and coastal flooding doesn’t stop with the toll on human lives and livelihoods—it can also have deep consequences for a country’s finances. Recent IMF staff research has found that a country’s vulnerability […]
Chart of the WeekHow e-Government Services Can Pay Dividends
By Ali Al-Sadiq The ability to renew your passport or driver’s license, pay a tax bill, or access government data with the click of a button or swipe of a screen, anytime and anywhere, has grown more important during the COVID-19 pandemic to prevent the spread of the virus. Beyond the obvious efficiency and transparency […]
Latin America and Caribbean’s Winding Road to Recovery
By Alejandro Werner, Anna Ivanova, and Takuji Komatsuzaki Latin America and Caribbean economies managed to bounce back from COVID-19’s initial economic devastation earlier in 2020. But the pandemic’s resurgence towards the end of the year threatens to thwart an uneven recovery and add to the steep social and human costs. After the sharp contraction in […]
Cooperation Critical to Reducing Divergent Paths to Recovery in Middle East and Central Asia
By Jihad Azour عربي, Français, Русский The road to recovery for the Middle East and Central Asia region will hinge on containment measures, access to and distribution of vaccines, the scope of policies to support growth, and measures to mitigate economic scarring from the pandemic. The virus’s second wave, which began in September, hurt many countries […]
