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Cover Selected Issues Papers
Economic Effects of Climate Change and Food Insecurity in Niger: Niger
Diogo Miguel Salgado Baptista
,
Yoro Diallo
, and
Mr. Arsene Kaho
Niger’s exposure to recurrent shocks, including climate shocks, increases its vulnerability to food insecurity. This paper aims to quantify the combined effects of climate shocks and food insecurity on key economic variables and identify the most effective mitigation policy responses using a general equilibrium model. Results indicate that rural households would be the most affected by a climate shock resulting in a decline in domestic agricultural production, which would reduce their consumption, erode their capital, and thus increase urban-rural inequalities. Simulations show that cash transfers and the reduction of internal mobility costs appear to be more effective in mitigating the impact on households of a climate shock on agricultural production.
Keywords:
Climate Change; Food Insecurity; General Equilibrium Model; Niger; Niger's exposure; mitigation policy response; cash transfer; food goods; equilibrium goods price; utility function; factory gate; consumption requirement; food consumption; consumption bundle Cit; calorie consumption kcalit; iceberg trade cost; cost imports; Consumption; Food security; Income; Sub-Saharan Africa; Global
Cover Selected Issues Papers
Macroeconomic Gains from Closing Gender Educational Gaps in Niger: Niger
Rasmané Ouedraogo
and
Diego B. P. Gomes
This paper explores the state of gender equality and education attainment of girls in Niger. It also estimates the macroeconomic gains from reducing gaps in education between boys and girls using a micro-founded general equilibrium model. The analysis shows that Niger has made some progress toward higher educational attainment for girls, but the country still lags far behind other sub-Saharan African countries. The results from the general equilibrium model suggest that closing the gender gaps in education would boost female labor participation, increase income earned by women and improve fiscal outcomes. More importantly, closing the gender gap in years of schooling in each income percentile would boost long-term GDP by 11 percent. These significant economic gains from investing in girls’ education will contribute to the achievements of the strategic goals defined under the Programme de Développement Economique et Social (PDES) 2022-26.
Keywords:
Gender; Education; Gains; increase income; income percentile; macroeconomic gain; Sahel region; income spectrum; Gender inequality; Women; Education spending; Sub-Saharan Africa
Cover Selected Issues Papers
Financial Inclusion in Niger: Challenges and Opportunities: Niger
Yoro Diallo
,
Mr. Arsene Kaho
, and
Can Sever
Financial inclusion can increase economic growth and productivity and reduce poverty and inequality by helping people and firms—particularly SMEs—to save and invest, smooth consumption, and better manage financial risks. This paper highlights Niger’s lag compared to other WAEMU countries in terms of access to and use of formal financial services, including for women and youth, and underscores key demand and supply side challenges to financial inclusion as well as structural impediments. It lays out key priorities for Niger to harness the potential of greater financial inclusion to support the country’s development agenda, including efforts to tackle low financial literacy, promote digitization, and address informality.
Keywords:
Financial Inclusion; Financial Institutions; Niger; Niger's lag; development agenda; Niger banking sector; MFI sector NPL ratio; BCEAO MFI; IMF staff calculation; Digital financial services; Digital currencies; Global
Cover Selected Issues Papers
Fostering Export Diversification in Niger: Niger
Rasmané Ouedraogo
and
Tomohide Mineyama
This selected issue paper investigates the drivers of diversification and explores the potential for fostering diversification in Niger with a focus on horizontal policies. The empirical results from panel regressions indicate that reforms to enhance human capital and the quality of infrastructure, to promote digitalization, to remove barriers to trade and improve governance are likely to yield the largest gains in terms of diversification for Niger.
Keywords:
Export diversification; Horizontal policy; Panel regression; drivers of diversification; copyright page; title page; export quality; Exports; Export fluctuations; Human capital; Infrastructure; Global; Sub-Saharan Africa
Cover Selected Issues Papers
Drivers of Inflation: Hungary
Estefania Cohn-Bech
,
Karim Foda
, and
Agustin Roitman
Though high and rising inflation has been a challenge for most economies across Europe in 2022 and into 2023, it has accelerated in Hungary to the highest level in Europe. This paper examines how and why Hungary reached historically high inflation. It draws on an augmented Phillips Curve to estimate the impact of common drivers of inflation, examines the role of labor market tightness and policy stances, and analyzes possible changes to the degree of exchange rate pass-through in recent years. Overall, a rapid recovery from the COVID-19 crisis, a series of exogenous shocks, and too loose a policy mix fueled inflation to its highest level in decades. Though monetary and fiscal policies are now tightening, regulatory price caps undermine those efforts. Going forward, a consistently and persistently tight overall policy mix is needed to drive inflation back to the central bank’s target.
Keywords:
Inflation; Hungary; Macroeconomic policy coordination; food inflation; B. inflation driver; drivers of inflation; producer price inflation; inflation in Hungary; Energy prices; Labor markets; Producer prices; Europe; Global
Cover Selected Issues Papers
Hungarian Monetary Policy Operations Before, During, and After the Pandemic: Hungary
Mr. Tonny Lybek
Within its inflation-targeting framework, the Magyar Nemzeti Bank (MNB) has frequently adjusted its monetary operations. This has raised questions about their internal consistency, appropriateness, and effectiveness. A broader assessment, implying a comparison to a counterfactual, is outside the scope of this paper. Our prior is agnostic. We find that the changes were generally well-motivated within the MNB statutory powers; prioritized, transparently explained, and monitored; and promptly adjusted, when they no longer served their purpose. Occasionally, some tools have worked at cross purposes. Government policies have at times hampered monetary policy. Simplicity comes with a premium, as complexity can blur signals.
Keywords:
Hungarian monetary operations; unconventional monetary instruments; MNB asset purchase program; MNB balance sheet; monetary policy stance; monetary policy operation; inflation-targeting framework; Monetary operations; Inflation; Liquidity; Mortgages; Central bank policy rate; Global
Cover IMF Working Papers
Surrogate Data Models: Interpreting Large-scale Machine Learning Crisis Prediction Models
Mr. Jorge A Chan-Lau
,
Ruofei Hu
,
Maksym Ivanyna
,
Ritong Qu
, and
Cheng Zhong
Machine learning models are becoming increasingly important in the prediction of economic crises. The models, however, use datasets comprising a large number of predictors (features) which impairs model interpretability and their ability to provide adequate guidance in the design of crisis prevention and mitigation policies. This paper introduces surrogate data models as dimensionality reduction tools in large-scale crisis prediction models. The appropriateness of this approach is assessed by their application to large-scale crisis prediction models developed at the IMF. The results are consistent with economic intuition and validate the use of surrogates as interpretability tools.
Keywords:
Crisis prediction; machine learning; surrogates; explainable models; IMF ML crisis; ML crisis prediction; Annex I. IMF ML; surrogate data models; model interpretability; Early warning systems; Yield curve; Deposit rates; Global
Cover IMF Working Papers
Assessing the Impact of Supply Disruptions on the Global Pandemic Recovery
Harri Kemp
,
Mr. Rafael A Portillo
, and
Marika Santoro
We estimate the role of (pre-Ukraine war) supply disruptions in constraining the Covid-19 pandemic recovery, for several advanced economies and emerging markets, and globally. We rely on two approaches. In the first approach, we use sign-restricted Vector Auto Regressions (SVAR) to identify supply and demand shocks in manufacturing, based on the co-movement of surveys on new orders and suppliers’ delivery times. The effects of these shocks on industrial production and GDP are recovered through a combination of local projection methods and the input-output framework in Acemoglu et al. (2016). In the second approach, we use the IMF’s G20 model to gauge the importance of supply shocks in jointly driving activity and inflation surprises. We find that supply disruptions subtracted between 0.5 and 1.2 percent from global value added during the global recovery in 2021, while also adding about 1 percent to global core inflation that same year.
Keywords:
Supply constraints; manufacturing; output; inflation; supply and demand demand shock; Ukraine war; supply disruption; supply-demand decomposition; inflation deviation; Supply shocks; Economic recovery; Industrial production; Global
Cover IMF Working Papers
AI and Macroeconomic Modeling: Deep Reinforcement Learning in an RBC model
Tohid Atashbar
and
Rui Aruhan Shi
This study seeks to construct a basic reinforcement learning-based AI-macroeconomic simulator. We use a deep RL (DRL) approach (DDPG) in an RBC macroeconomic model. We set up two learning scenarios, one of which is deterministic without the technological shock and the other is stochastic. The objective of the deterministic environment is to compare the learning agent's behavior to a deterministic steady-state scenario. We demonstrate that in both deterministic and stochastic scenarios, the agent's choices are close to their optimal value. We also present cases of unstable learning behaviours. This AI-macro model may be enhanced in future research by adding additional variables or sectors to the model or by incorporating different DRL algorithms.
Keywords:
Reinforcement learning; Deep reinforcement learning; Artificial intelligence; RL; DRL; Learning algorithms; Macro modeling; RBC; Real business cycles; DDPG; Deep deterministic policy gradient; Actor-critic algorithms; RBC model; AI-macroeconomic simulator; AI experiment; learning algorithm; Machine learning; Rational expectations; Debt relief; Global
Cover IMF Working Papers
Weighted Median Inflation Around the World: A Measure of Core Inflation
Laurence M. Ball
,
Carlos Carvalho
,
Christopher Evans
, and
Mr. Luca A Ricci
The standard measure of core or underlying inflation is the inflation rate excluding food and energy prices. This paper constructs an alternative measure, the weighted median inflation rate, for 38 advanced and emerging economies using subclass level disaggretion of the CPI over 1990-2021, and compares the properties of this measure to those of standard core. For quarterly data, we find that the weighted median is less volatile than standard core, more closely related to economic slack, and more closely related to headline inflation over the next year. The weighted median also has a drawback: in most countries, it has a lower average level than headline inflation. We therefore also consider a measure of core inflation that eliminates this bias, which is based on the percentile of sectoral inflation rates that matches the sample average of headline CPI inflation.
Keywords:
core inflation; median inflation; Phillips curve; D. panel Phillips Curve regression table; C. Phillips Curve estimation; RMSE of headline inflation; measure of core inflation; weighted median; core measure; Inflation; Consumer price indexes; Output gap