IMF Weekend Read

 

Women in Economics: Clair Brown's Holistic Approach May 5, 2022 (Photo: UC Berkeley) Becoming an economist in the 1970s- for a woman, was a lonely road. When Clair Brown joined the Department of Economics at UC Berkeley in 1974 alongside people like Nobel laureate George Akerlof, she was the only female faculty member. But thanks to Brown's prodding, the department hired more women and Berkeley has since become well known for its female economists. Brown has always seen the power of diversity in her work. In 2013 she helped create a new graduate program called Development Engineering that teams engineers with economists to develop technologies that benefit developing regions. Today, she's advocating for a new, more sustainable approach to economic thinking in her book, Buddhist Economics. Journalist, Rhoda Metcalfe spoke with Clair Brown for our special series on extraordinary Women in Economics.  Claire Brown is Professor of Economics at University of California, Berkeley, and author of Buddhist Economics. Listen to the podcast Read the transcript   ***** Thanks for listening to the podcast. We're always looking to improve your experience so let us know if you have any suggestions! Send your comments to me at bedwards2@imf.org.   Bruce Edwards Producer, IMF Podcasts

Dear maria, In today's edition we spotlight discussions at the IMF’s recent Spring Meetings on the future of money, war's long-lasting economic shocks, COVID-19's impact on trust among the young, pressure on purchasing power in Europe, Clair Brown's Buddhist Economics, challenges confronting Bretton Woods institutions, parallels between today’s oil-price shock and that of the 1970s, a debt-for-nature swap in Belize, and much more. Digital Money Crypto Crossroads (PHOTO: METAMORWORKS/ISTOCK BY GETTY IMAGES) When they first emerged, crypto “currencies” were widely seen as an anti-establishment movement that threatened the power of central banks and their monopoly control of the money supply. Yet today central banks, especially in emerging markets, are embracing their own digital currencies. The future of money was a central topic at the IMF’s Spring Meetings. In a panel discussion moderated by the Financial Times’s Gillian Tett, the IMF’s Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said that the use of volatile crypto assets as money was not advisable. Stable coins provided some of the same investment opportunities, but central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) of the sort being piloted by many countries were the most exciting innovation, she told the panel, which also featured Brazil’s central bank chief Roberto Campos Neto, India’s finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman and the Monetary Authority of Singapore’s Ravi Menon. Georgieva said the IMF is expanding its work on digital money in several areas, including striking the right balance in international regulation and the risks to the monetary sovereignty of smaller nations. “Disruptive is good but destructive is bad,” she said. In separate events held over the course of the Spring Meetings, a panel featuring the IMF’s Antonio Garcia Pascual and others weighed the implications for financial stability from the rapid growth of Fintech in a discussion chaired by The Economist's Alice Fulwood for the launch of the IMF’s Financial Stability Report. Bidisha Das of the IMF's Statistics Department explains how mobile money is counted as part of money in the economy. Watch here The New Economy Forum’s Fintech and GovTech sessions covered digital currencies and energy consumption, how to ensure that cryptos don’t benefit criminals, and central bank digital currencies, among other things. Find all the IMF's work on digital money and Fintech including blogs, papers, videos, and more here.    F&D War's Long-Lasting Shocks (PHOTO: NOUSKRABS/ISTOCK BY GETTY IMAGES) Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is an unmitigated catastrophe for global peace and particularly for peace in Europe. But the war also greatly compounds a number of preexisting adverse global economic trends, including rising inflation, extreme poverty, increasing food insecurity, deglobalization, and worsening environmental degradation. In addition, with an apparent end to the peace dividend that has long helped finance higher social expenditures, rebalancing fiscal priorities could prove quite challenging even in advanced economies.  In an article for the forthcoming issue of F&D Magazine, Kenneth Rogoff argues that the most important macroeconomic lesson today is that in crafting responses to the latest major macroeconomic shock—whether it be the financial crisis, the pandemic, or now war in Europe—policymakers must remember that although things usually get better after a catastrophic shock, they can also get much worse. Thus monetary and fiscal policy need to incorporate resilience, and not just the maximalism that has become fashionable of late. Read the full article   F&D Trust Among the Young (PHOTO: MARK JONES / UNSPLASH) Without trust, politicians struggle to convince people to follow their advice and instructions. From COVID-19 to climate change and now the Russian invasion of Ukraine, governments are asking or telling people to alter their behavior and make sacrifices—great sacrifices in the case of war. Yet in an environment rife with conspiracy theories, trust is becoming much harder to establish and sustain. Public responses to the pandemic have underscored the importance of trust, among the young especially, and may hold lessons for other areas of public life. In an article for F&D Magazine's forthcoming June issue, Cevat Aksoy, Barry Eichengreen and Orkun Saka show that poorly handled public health and other disasters erode young people’s trust in politicians and scientists for years. Drawing on opinion polls, together with data on the incidence of epidemics since 1970, the authors say that the problem—and its solution—has to do with how scientists present themselves and communicate their findings. Read the full article     Visit Us Online For other recent articles, check out F&D online.   In The Basic Skills Gap, Eric Hanushek and Ludger Woessmann examine how to develop basic skills to meet development goals. Also read our three-part series on The Future of Inflation, by Ruchir Agarwal and Miles Kimball.   Want to a print copy delivered to your home or office?    Click here to subscribe.   (PHOTO: EURONEWS)   Europe Under Pressure Beyond the humanitarian disaster, the most direct impact of the war in Ukraine on Europe is a sharp increase in commodity prices that it pressuring people’s purchasing power, Gita Gopinath, the IMF’s First Deputy Managing Director, said in an interview with Euronews. “And the impact of the war and the sanctions haven't played out fully at this point," she said. (PHOTO: MLENNY/ISTOCK)   Swapping Debt for Nature In Belize, a debt-for-nature swap has cut the Caribbean country’s stock of external debt and is creating cash to protect the longest coral reef in the Western Hemisphere. There is scope for similar swaps to fund conservation or climate work in other countries with expensive debt on their books, according to our latest Country Focus article. (PHOTO: UC BERKELEY)   Women in Economics Claire Brown, Professor of Economics at University of California, Berkeley, advocates for a new, more sustainable approach to economic thinking in her book, Buddhist Economics. In a new podcast, Brown spoke with journalist Rhoda Metcalfe for our special series on extraordinary women in economics. (PHOTO: IMF PHOTO)   A New Bretton Woods? Fifty years ago, the dollar took over the role of global reserve asset from gold and, since then, the world economy has become increasingly financialized. The shift to a commodities-driven economy could challenge this. Zoltan Pozsar of Credit Suisse and Alasdair MacLeod of GoldMoney discuss the implications of “Bretton Woods III” in this seminar by the IMF’s Independent Evaluation Office.   For some, rising oil prices since the war in Ukraine and sanctions on Russia echo the 1970s, when geopolitical tensions also caused fossil fuel prices to spike. But times have changed, as the IMF’s Nico Valckx’s shows in our latest Chart of the Week. Economists track oil intensity by comparing how many barrels are needed to produce $1 million in gross domestic product, and this measure was about 3.5 times higher than current levels when crude prices almost tripled between August 1973 and January 1974. WEEKLY ROUND-UP 01. Debt: Boon or Bane for Growth? An unexpected increase in public debt generally drives gross domestic product lower, but it can also lift growth in some circumstances, according an IMF staff paper by Constance de Soyres, Reina Kawai, and Mengxue Wang. After analyzing data on gross public debt for 178 countries over 1995-2020, the authors conclude that higher public debt hurts real GDP for countries that have high initial debt or debt that has been rising for the five preceding years, but boosts GDP for countries that have a low-income level or have benefitted from debt relief. 02. Export Diversification In a new staff paper, the IMF’s Natasha X Che and Xuege Zhang develop an export recommendation tool to provide policymakers with actionable insights on export diversification. Economies that align their export structures with those recommended by the tool achieve both higher GDP growth and lower growth volatility, the authors say. Using an interactive filter to sift through data covering over 190 economies, the tool shows that export structure matters for obtaining high and stable growth. 03. China's Interest Rates China is moving towards a system similar to that in many advanced economies in which monetary policy is driven by interest rates. In a new staff paper, the IMF’s Sonali Das and Wenting Song say that stronger coordination between fiscal and monetary authorities could improve the transmission of changes to interest rates and other policy instruments. Uncoordinated moves have less impact, they say. 04. Overseeing Public Banks Public banks should be subject to the same expectations for governance, regulation, and supervision as private banks, say the IMF’s Mark Adams, Hanife Yesim Aydin, Hee Kyong Chon, Anastasiia Morozova, and Ebru Sonbul Iskender in a staff paper. Many governments relied on public banks to boost credit to stricken businesses during the pandemic and this may have adverse effects on balance sheets in the future, meaning that stronger oversight matters more now than ever, the authors say. 05. Good Governance in Sub-Saharan Africa As governance and corruption issues take center stage in international debates, the IMF’s Good Governance in Sub-Saharan Africa: Opportunities and Lessons introduces a new framework for more candid discussions of these issues with its member countries. This collection points to sound institutions as the means to ensure integrity in public affairs, which may be one of sub-Saharan Africa’s foremost milestones in its journey to sustainable development. 06. Revenue Portal The IMF has launched a Revenue Portal dedicated to tax policy and tax and customs administration, encompassing a broad range of products related to the IMF’s capacity development and research work, including reports, tools, working papers, technical notes, and other publications on priority revenue issues as well as training courses and seminars, offering a repository of the IMF’s work to the international community. MARK YOUR CALENDAR 01. LinkedIn News: A Greener Labor Market LinkedIn News’s Nina Melendez sits down with the authors of recent IMF research on green jobs and why labor is pivotal to achieving the net-zero goal by 2050 on May 9 at 3:00 PM ET. Watch here. 02. Twitter Spaces: How War in Ukraine is Affecting Africa's Economies Abebe Selassie of the IMF and Amaka Anku of the Eurasia Group join the Center for Global Development's Gyude Moore to discuss the impact of the war in Ukraine on Africa and the IMF’s recent sub-Saharan Africa regional economic outlook on May 12 at 10:00 AM ET. Watch here. Nick Owen Editor IMF Weekend Read nowen@imf.org   Thank you again very much for your interest in the Weekend Read! Be sure to let us know what issues and trends we should have on our radar.