TESLA CEO ELON MUSK reignited a long-simmering debate in June over Bitcoin’s energy consumption. Tesla will accept the cryptocurrency for car sales only “when there’s confirmation of reasonable (~50 percent) clean energy usage by miners with positive future trend,” Musk said in a tweet.
Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic has caused dramatic loss of human life and major damage to the European economy, but thanks to an exceptionally strong policy response, potentially devastating outcomes have been avoided.
Five years after the first stirrings of the crisis, some countries have recovered, but others are still struggling. F&D looks at the world today and sees a complex and mixed picture for the future of the world economy. In "Tracking the Global Recovery" we learn that most emerging markets seem to have moved on from the effects of the crisis, but most advanced economies have not. "Fixing the System" looks at how the pace of reforms to strengthen financial regulation has now slowed. World Bank trade economist Bernard Hoekman takes stock of incipient moves toward protectionism in "Trade Policy: So Far So Good?". "Bystanders at the Collapse" looks at how emerging markets and low-income countries weathered the global recession. Financier Mohamed El-Erian weighs in on the potential threat posed by large payment surpluses and deficits in "Stable Disequilibrium." Also in the magazine, we explore what's happening in commodities markets, assess the rise of green technologies, take a look at the shifts in South Asia's labor force, and uncover the harm money laundering can inflict on national economies. F&D's People in Economics series profiles Laura Tyson, Minder of the Gaps, and the Back to Basics series explains how money markets provide a way for borrowers to meet short-term financial needs.
This paper focuses on overcoming the challenges of globalization. The paper highlights that globalization has the potential to make all individuals better off. However, there is no assurance that all individuals will be better off or that all changes will be positive. The studies that show that, on average, poverty declines with economic growth are encouraging. But averages hide the negative impact on individual countries and on certain groups. In addition, there are important questions about the relationships between economic policies and outcomes, especially the impact of macroeconomic and structural reform policies on poverty.
In the decade following the fall of the Berlin Wall, Baltic and central European countries made huge strides toward meeting one of history’s most daunting challenges: the rapid transition from central planning to a market-based economy. But what now? In separate studies, two IMF teams examined the strategies these countries are adopting, particularly relating to macroeconomic and financial sector policies, in the run-up to European Union (EU) accession and, later, monetary union. Jeremy Clift of the IMF’s External Relations Department spoke to four of the authors—Robert A. Feldman and C. Maxwell Watson, who looked at five central European states, and Johannes Mueller and Christian Beddies, whose new publication covers the Baltic economies—on the groundwork needed for EU accession.
Anumber of countries making the transition from centrally planned to market economies have experienced strong real exchange rate appreciations. What is causing these movements, and what steps should policymakers take in response? And with these appreciations typically entailing higher inflation, will the countries seeking to join the European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) be able to meet the Maastricht inflation criterion? A recent paper by Mark De Broeck of the IMFs European I Department and Torsten Sløk of the Research Department finds that, in a number of countries, these appreciations are mostly driven by productivity gains. When real exchange rate appreciations are part of the process of income convergence toward the advanced economies, there is no need, they argue, for a policy response.
The IMF is a financial cooperative, in some ways like a credit union. On joining, each member country pays in a subscription, called its “quota.” A country’s quota is broadly determined by its economic position relative to other members and takes into account members’ GDP, current account transactions, and official reserves. Quotas (see box, below) define members’ financial and organizational relations in the IMF.