Business and Economics > Information Management

You are looking at 1 - 10 of 35 items for

  • Type: Journal Issue x
Clear All Modify Search
Jocelyn Boussard
,
Chiara Castrovillari
,
Tomohide Mineyama
,
Marta Spinella
, and
Maxwell Tuuli
This paper investigates the consequences of global shocks on a sample of low- and lower-middle-income countries with a particular focus on fragile and conflict-affected states (FCS). FCS are a group of countries that display institutional weakness and/or are negatively affected by active conflict, thereby facing challenges in macroeconomic policy management. Examining different global shocks associated with commodity prices, external demand, and financing conditions, this paper establishes that FCS economies are more vulnerable to these shocks compared to non-FCS peers. The higher sensitivity of FCS economies is mainly driven by procyclical fiscal responses, aggravated by the lack of effective spending controls and timely access to financial sources. External financing serves as a source of stability, partially mitigating the adverse impact of global shocks. This paper contributes to a better understanding of how conditions of fragility, which are on the rise in many parts of the world today, can amplify the effects of negative exogenous shocks. Its results highlight the diverse nature of underlying sources of vulnerabilities, spanning from fiscal and external buffers to institutional quality and economic structure, with lessons applicable to a broader set of countries. Efficient and timely external financial support from external partners, including international financial institutions, should help countries’ counter-cyclical responses to mitigate adverse shocks and achieve macroeconomic stability.
Mr. Alejandro Simone
and
Vybhavi Balasundharam
The 2015 Supply Chain Management Review lays out a sound agenda for procurement reform. The ongoing work on a new procurement bill and regulations are an important opportunity to spearhead procurement reform and step-up implementation. Several important reform aspects worth prioritizing are the simplification and standardization of aprocurement procedures, the standardization of transparency requirements through the adoption of the Open Contracting Data Standards, transitioning to a new e-procurement system that is linked to the government’s integrated financial management information system (IFMIS) and other systems, making preferential procurement more cost effective and goal oriented, and strengthening staff capacity to carry out procurement. Opportunities to centralize procurement should be further explored to leverage and develop limited capacity.
Mr. Tobias Adrian
and
Mr. Tommaso Mancini Griffoli
This Note explores the design and governance of platforms to enhance cross-border payments in line with public policy goals. While much innovation in recent years has more narrowly targeted end-user frictions, the vision in this paper is based on the mandate of the IMF, governed by the central banks and finance ministries of 190 member countries. Cross-border payments present the foundation for the global financial system, and its functioning is overseen by the IMF.
International Monetary Fund. Asia and Pacific Dept
This Selected Issues paper on Solomon Island discusses big data and high frequency surveillance for Pacific Islands countries (PICs). Big data can be used to fill data gaps for PICs and the IMF can serve as a capacity-building and innovation hub. The estimators computed based on AIS data have been used as part of the surveillance dashboard by the Solomon Islands team and have been discussed with the authorities. Initiatives like the Arslanalp, Koepke, and Verschuur estimation exploit cross-country synergies and technical expertise available at the IMF to provide valuable inputs for both internal and external use. Other potential applications of the Automatic Identification System (AIS) can expand on this effort, for example, some single-country applications are monitoring of fishing vessels to estimate fishing rents from daily vessel schemes, monitoring export-related ships to monitor for piracy/exports misreporting, track tourism in real time, etc. Given the global nature of the AIS data, it can also be used to analyze global supply chains, trade disruptions from natural disasters, the effect of trade policies, etc.