Narrow Your Choices

Refine By Countries

Refine By Topic

Refine By Series

Refine By Language

Refine By Date

—

Refine By IMF Taxonomy

Refine By JEL Taxonomy

Refine by LOC Taxonomy

Refine By THEMA Taxonomy

  • Print
  • Save

Browse

You are looking at 151 - 160 of 23,531 items for

  • Type: Journal Issue x
Clear All Modify Search
Cover IMF Staff Country Reports
People’s Republic of China: 2022 Article IV Consultation-Press Release; Staff Report; and Statement by the Executive Director for the People’s Republic of China
International Monetary Fund. Asia and Pacific Dept
Following an impressive recovery from the initial impact of the pandemic, China’s growth has slowed significantly in 2022. It remains under pressure as more transmissible variants have led to recurring outbreaks that have dampened mobility, the real estate crisis remains unresolved, and global demand has slowed. Macroeconomic policies have been eased appropriately, but their effectiveness has been diminished by a focus on enterprises and increasingly less effective traditional infrastructure investment rather than support to households. The pandemic and its impacts have also been a setback to economic rebalancing toward private consumption and to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. A slowdown in growth-enhancing reforms against the backdrop of increasing geoeconomic fragmentation pressures stand in the way of a much-needed lift to productivity growth, weighing on China’s medium-term growth potential.
Keywords:
state-administered SOE funds; government fund; interest rate; COVID risk level; supportive fiscal policy; COVID wave; containment measure; Housing; Credit; COVID-19; Global; Asia and Pacific
Cover IMF Staff Country Reports
Iraq: 2022 Article IV Consultation-Press Release; and Staff Report
International Monetary Fund. Middle East and Central Asia Dept.
Significant socio-economic fragilities continue to persist. The formation of a new government in October 2022 provides an opportunity to rekindle the reform momentum, which has been stalled for over a year amid political uncertainty. The economy has been gradually recovering, supported by strong oil revenues and accommodative policies. Inflation has been relatively contained as the pass-through from high global commodity prices has been muted by food and fuel subsidies. Despite fiscal and external current account surpluses, Iraq’s dependence on oil and vulnerability to future oil price volatility continued to increase.
Keywords:
balance of payments; CBI foreign exchange window; CBI governance; METAC mission; inflation risk; CBI auction; oil wealth; oil revenue; CBI website; accommodative policy; Oil prices; Oil; Fiscal stance; Global; Middle East and Central Asia
Cover IMF Staff Country Reports
Islamic Republic of Mauritania: 2022 Article IV Consultation and Request for 42-Month Arrangements under the Extended Credit Facility and the Extended Fund Facility-Press Release; Staff Report; and Statement by the Executive Director for the Islamic Republic of Mauritania
International Monetary Fund. Middle East and Central Asia Dept.
Volatile commodity prices and a tightly managed exchange rate (ER) have led to boom and bust cycles with significant impacts on the public and financial sectors. While the previous Extended Credit Facility (ECF) arrangement (December 2017—March 2021) has helped maintain macroeconomic stability, the pandemic has delayed structural reform implementation and widened the gap to reach the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In addition, surging international commodity prices since the start of Russia’s war in Ukraine have deteriorated the external and fiscal balances and led to inflationary pressures and food insecurity. In March 2021, the authorities requested a successor arrangement to support accelerated implementation of their national development strategy, help increase social and infrastructure spending, and improve governance and the business environment.
Keywords:
development effort; Medium-term policy priority; Mauritanian authorities; commodity price movement; IMF arrangement; AIV policy recommendation; Operational risk; Debt sustainability analysis; Currency markets; Global; Middle East and Central Asia; Middle East; North Africa; East Africa
Cover IMF Staff Country Reports
Iraq: Selected Issues
International Monetary Fund. Middle East and Central Asia Dept.
Selected Issues
Keywords:
electricity sector; gains from Reform; title page; demand management; supply-demand gap; Pension spending; Pensions; Electricity; Public sector; Retirement; Middle East and Central Asia
Cover IMF Staff Country Reports
People’s Republic of China: 2022 Article IV Consultation-Press Release; Staff Report; and Statement by the Executive Director for the People’s Republic of China
International Monetary Fund. Asia and Pacific Dept
Following an impressive recovery from the initial impact of the pandemic, China’s growth has slowed significantly in 2022. It remains under pressure as more transmissible variants have led to recurring outbreaks that have dampened mobility, the real estate crisis remains unresolved, and global demand has slowed. Macroeconomic policies have been eased appropriately, but their effectiveness has been diminished by a focus on enterprises and increasingly less effective traditional infrastructure investment rather than support to households. The pandemic and its impacts have also been a setback to economic rebalancing toward private consumption and to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. A slowdown in growth-enhancing reforms against the backdrop of increasing geoeconomic fragmentation pressures stand in the way of a much-needed lift to productivity growth, weighing on China’s medium-term growth potential.
Cover IMF Working Papers
Good Will Hunting: Do Disasters Make Us More Charitable?
Mr. Serhan Cevik
Humans are usually compassionate, caring and empathetic toward others, but are we really hardwired for altruism when a disaster hits? There is evidence that people exposed to natural disasters tend to behave more philanthropically, but most studies rely on small-scale surveys and experimental data. For that reason, this paper contributes to the literature by investigating whether the COVID-19 pandemic has altered prosocial tendencies and charitable donations, using a novel daily dataset of debit and credit card transactions. I conduct a real-time analysis of actual charitable donations in three European countries and find that the COVID-19 pandemic and government interventions have no significant effect on how much people contribute to charities as a share of total spending. A higher preference for precautionary savings in the midst of the pandemic appears to outweigh altruistic behavior, while government welfare programs crowds out private charitable donations.
Keywords:
Natural disasters; COVID-19 pandemic; charitable giving; donations; genorosity; prosocial behavior; card transactions; Baltics; Estonia; Latvia; Lithania; credit card transactions; government welfare program; real-time analysis; government intervention; pandemic shock; COVID-19; Consumer credit; Total expenditures; Global
Cover IMF Working Papers
How Costly Will Reining in Inflation Be? It Depends on How Rational We Are
Mr. Jorge A Alvarez
and
Allan Dizioli
We document that past highly inflationary episodes are often characterized by a steeper inflationslack relationship. We show that model-generated data from a standard small Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE) model can replicate this empirical finding when estimated with different expectation formation processes. When inflation becomes de-anchored and expectations drift, we can observe high inflation even with a mildly positive output gap in response to cost-push shocks. The results imply that we should not use an unconditioned (not controlling for expectations change) Phillips curve estimated in normal times to predict the cost of reining in inflation. Our optimal policy exercises prescribe early monetary policy tightening and then easing in the context of positive output gaps and inflation far above the central bank target.
Keywords:
DSGE; inflation dynamics; optimal monetary policy; forecasting and simulation; bayesian estimation; inflation-slack curve; expectations drift; shock decomposition; inflation episode; Inflation; Output gap; Real wages; Wage gap; Wages; Global
Cover IMF Working Papers
Restructuring Domestic Sovereign Debt: An Analytical Illustration
Mr. David A. Grigorian
Sovereign domestic debt restructurings have become more common in recent years and touched upon a growing share of total public debt. This paper offers a simple framework for policymakers to think about the decision whether to restructure domestic sovereign debt as part of an effort to reduce overall public indebtedness. It also highlights a rather wide range of technical, legal, and operational issues a sovereign may face while restructuring domestic debt. As expected, factors such as debt reduction required to achieve sustainability, fiscal savings from a restructuring, and economic costs of a restructuring are key inputs into the decision making regarding a restructuring, but so are factors such as the composition of debt, financial stability costs, and crisis preparedness, all of which are discussed in the paper.
Keywords:
Domestic debt restructuring; sovereign debt; net debt relief; restructuring Laffer Curve; debt relief calculation; debt relief target; DDR Laffer Curve; Debt relief; Debt restructuring; Sovereign debt restructuring; Domestic debt; Europe
Cover IMF Working Papers
How to Mitigate the Impact of Economic Downturns on Labor Markets: Evidence from Nicaragua
Ms. Sandra Marcelino
and
Mariana Sans
This paper studies the drivers of the labor market performance in Nicaragua with a particular focus on informality, to identify vulnerable groups during economic downturns; and estimates the speed of adjustment of employment to shocks. The paper compares this experience with the ones in other CAPDR countries (Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Panama). Our findings are that while the high countercyclical informality in Nicaragua has been the active margin of adjustment during economic downturns mitigating unemployment, the trade-off has been a lower speed of adjustment to shocks hampering the country’s ability to revert to its potential. Policy recommendations relate to mitigating the impact of downturns on employment in Nicaragua, easing adjustments and inequalities in the labor market to hasten the employment recovery and thus, support growth.
Keywords:
labor market indicator; informality responsiveness; indicators in Nicaragua; labor market performance; employment recovery; Labor markets; Labor force participation; Employment; Unemployment; Unemployment rate; Global; Western Hemisphere; Caribbean
Cover IMF Working Papers
What Policy Combinations Worked? The Effect of Policy Packages on Bank Lending during COVID-19
Mr. Divya Kirti
,
Mr. Maria Soledad Martinez Peria
,
Ms. Prachi Mishra
, and
Jan Strasky
This paper analyzes the impact of fiscal, monetary, and prudential policies during the COVID-19 pandemic on bank lending across a broad sample of countries. We combine a comprehensive announcementlevel dataset of policy actions with bank and firm-level information to analyze the effectiveness of different types of policies. We document that different types of policies were introduced together and hence accounting for policy combinations, or packages, is crucial. Lending grew faster at banks in countries that announced packages combining fiscal, monetary, and prudential measures relative to those that relied on some, but not all, policy dimensions. Within packages including all three types of policy measures, banks in countries with more and larger measures saw faster loan growth. The impact was larger among more constrained banks with low equity levels. Large packages combining fiscal, monetary and prudential policies also increased liquidity for bank dependent firms, but did not disproportionately benefit unviable firms.
Keywords:
COVID-19; policy packages; policy effectiveness; bank lending; IMF working paper research Department; policy combination; policy package; prudential policy; Bank credit; Credit; Loans; Global