IMF Podcasts

After decades of being shrouded in suspicion and controversy, nuclear energy is emerging as a viable clean alternative to oil and gas. The war in Ukraine has turned post-pandemic energy shortages into a full-blown energy crisis and nuclear power plants across Europe that were destined to close will continue to operate. Ted Nordhaus is the Executive…

Events of the last three years have made life difficult on many levels for millions of people around the world. And while expecting more support from social and financial institutions during hard times is nothing new, the recent rise in prices has left people angry and questioning the efficacy of the social contract between the government and its c…

Economic progress improves lives, but it can also clash with some of the bigger development problems we face, like gender equality and the environment. Seema Jayachandran believes striking that balance is key to making economic development work for everyone. Jayachandran’s research has helped change gender attitudes in India’s schools, and conserve…

Inflation is high virtually everywhere, but what’s pushing prices to record levels in Europe is not necessarily what’s fueling inflation in the United States. The European Central Bank and the Federal Reserve share a common problem and similar financial tools to fight it, but Europe’s supply-dominated inflation and America’s mostly demand-dominated…

Economic outlooks don’t come easy in the current environment but the latest Regional Economic Outlook for sub-Saharan Africa proved to be particularly challenging. Its title Living on the Edge tells part of the story but in this podcast, economist Wenjie Chen walks us through the research behind the new report. Chen is a deputy head in the Regional…

Cryptocurrencies have grabbed news headlines with their dramatic highs and lows, and their proponents argue they could revolutionize the financial system, making it faster and fairer. But is the cryptocurrency craze dragging us all into dangerous waters? Hilary Allen is a professor of law at American University and studies the impact of new financi…

Amid growing calls to deglobalize the economy, Raghuram Rajan says not so fast. Rajan, a former Governor of the Bank of India and former IMF Chief Economist, delivered this year's Per Jacobsson Lecture, in which he argues that continued globalization is our best chance to tackle climate change. Transcript: https://bit.ly/3EVhCIC Watch the webcast o…

Rising risks to the inflation outlook and rapidly changing views about the likely pace of monetary policy tightening have been dominant themes affecting financial stability. The latest Global Financial Stability Report (GFSR) says the Russian invasion of Ukraine has also exerted a material drag on the global recovery from the pandemic and increased…

With shock upon shock hitting the world economy in the last three years, IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva's customary opening speech to the Annual Meetings warned of a darker global outlook and emphasized the need for the world to come together to deal with the consequences. The speech was delivered to an audience of students at Georgetow…

How can multilateral institutions like the IMF help close the gender gap? IMF Senior Advisor on Gender, Dr. Ratna Sahay joins Jason Mitchell, Head of Responsible Investment Research at Man Group, on their A Sustainable Future podcast to talk about how gender disparities hurt economic growth. Dr. Sahay has been a gender equality pioneer over the yea…

The Michel Camdessus Central Banking Lecture is an annual event honoring the IMF's longest-serving Managing Director. This year's lecture was presented by François Villeroy de Galhau, Governor of the Banque De France, and introduced by IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva. In his lecture, Governor de Galhau says today's multiple crises are ch…

While consumers' expectations of where prices are going are something that economists have been tracking for a long time, understanding how those expectations are formed provides valuable insight toward controlling inflation. New research by economists Carlo Pizzinelli (IMF), Peter Andre (Briq Institute), Christopher Roth (University of Cologne), a…

Welcome to the 5th and final episode of Fintech Forward, the IMF podcast that focuses on financial technology. Hosted by IMF economist Tara Iyer, the special 5-part series draws from the expertise of the IMF Monetary and Capital Markets Department (MCM) to better understand the impact of emerging technologies on financial systems and local economie…

Sanctions are not new, but they deliver bigger global shocks and are easier to avoid than at any time in history. Nicholas Mulder's latest book, The Economic Weapon, the Rise of Sanctions as a Tool of Modern War, looks at sanctions regimes of the past to better understand the implications of today's sweeping sanctions against Russia. In this podcas…

Welcome to episode 4 of Fintech Forward, the IMF podcast that focuses on financial technology. Hosted by IMF economist Tara Iyer, the special 5-part series draws from the expertise of the IMF Monetary and Capital Markets Department (MCM) to better understand the impact of emerging technologies on financial systems and local economies around the wor…

Economic growth depends on several factors, but a new study (forthcoming) by Eric Hanushek and Ludger Woessmann shows nothing is more important for development than equitable education. Hanushek is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, and in this podcast, he says skill differences account for three-quarters of cross-cou…

Mahatma Gandhi once said, "Live simply so that others may simply live.” In this podcast, we hear from an economist who believes there is more to poverty reduction than just money. Sabina Alkire began her long career helping the poor doing volunteer work alongside the likes of Mother Teresa- then studying theology before turning to economics. Today,…

Welcome to episode 3 of Fintech Forward, the IMF podcast that focuses on financial technology. Hosted by IMF economist Tara Iyer, this special 5-part series draws from the expertise of the IMF Monetary and Capital Markets Department (MCM) to better understand the impact of emerging technologies on financial systems and local economies around the wo…

Inflation has pushed up prices for almost everything, but rising food prices could mean life or death for people in countries already struggling with conflict, economic downturns, and the effects of climate change. Maximo Torero Cullen is Chief Economist for the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization, which tracks global food security. In this podc…

Welcome to episode 2 of Fintech Forward, a new IMF podcast series with a focus on financial technology. Hosted by IMF economist Tara Iyer, Fintech Forward draws from the expertise of the IMF Monetary and Capital Markets Department (MCM) to better understand the impact of emerging technologies on financial systems and local economies around the worl…

The energy crises of the early 70s, the 80s, and the early 2000s all had their challenges, but none were so intertwined with other emergencies like a war in Europe, climate change, and a global pandemic. Daniel Yergin won the Pulitzer Prize and many other accolades for his writing on the political economy of global energy. His latest book The New M…

Albert Einstein once said, "In the midst of every crisis, lies great opportunity." But while the war in Ukraine has sparked crises on several fronts, the opportunities are not all that obvious at this point. Historians can help connect those lines by looking back at how we emerged from history's darkest hours. Patricia Clavin is Professor of Modern…

While international financial institutions work with policymakers to help countries navigate their way through the myriad of disruptions in the global economy of late, the private sector plays a critical role in catalyzing investment that will help bring long-term solutions. In this podcast, Alphabet and Google Chief Financial Officer Ruth Porat an…

The war in Ukraine and the rise of emerging market economies have opened a new chapter in international relations, with important implications for the global economic order. Like an earthquake, the war has an epicenter, located in Russia and Ukraine, but its seismic waves are impacting economies far and wide and revealing a shift in the underlying …

Welcome to Fintech Forward, a new IMF podcast series with a focus on financial technology. Fintech has grown exponentially in recent years and prompted a paradigm shift in virtually all areas of finance, with significant implications for financial stability. Fintech Forward, hosted by IMF economist Tara Iyer, will draw from the expertise of the IMF…

When women begin to participate more in the economy, good things happen. There's more growth, less inequality, and greater financial stability. So, why is women's labor force participation still so low in so many countries? Katharine Christopherson is an Assistant General Counsel in the IMF legal Department and coauthor of some new research that lo…

Most of the goods we purchase travel across the oceans in steel containers aboard the largest ships ever to sail the seas. But the pandemic and ensuing lockdowns knocked the wind from their sails and disrupted the entire global shipping network, causing supply shortages and soaring shipping costs. IMF economist Yan Carrière-Swallow has studied the …

Economies grow better when they are more equal, and taxation is a powerful tool to help reduce inequalities. But increasingly, the international tax system is doing the opposite of that by allowing corporations and the world's wealthiest people to avoid paying their fair share. The Tax Justice Network estimates the combined global revenue losses fr…

Fragility and conflict have forced hundreds of millions of people to live outside of state control without access to basic services. And with violent conflict on the rise, two-thirds of the world's poorest could soon be living in fragile and conflict affected states. The International Committee of the Red Cross is one of the world's most important …

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 f…

La reprise économique en Afrique subsaharienne a surpris à la hausse au second semestre 2021, mais ces progrès ont été compromis cette année par l'invasion russe de l'Ukraine. La guerre a déclenché un choc économique mondial qui frappe la région à un moment où la capacité de réaction des pays est minime, voire inexistante. Papa N'Diaye dirige l'équ…

The economic recovery in sub-Saharan Africa surprised on the upside in the second half of 2021, but that progress has been jeopardized this year by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The war has triggered a global economic shock that is hitting the region at a time when countries’ ability to respond is minimal to nonexistent. Papa N’Diaye leads the t…

The war in Ukraine has sparked one of the biggest refugee crises of modern times. So, can Europe afford to accommodate the millions of people coming across its borders? Giovanni Peri says while a crisis of this scale will imply significant upfront costs, the European Union is doing right by investing in the human capital of refugees. Peri heads the…

While financial stability risks have risen on several fronts since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, the latest Global Financial Stability Report (GFSR) says no global systemic event affecting financial institutions or markets has materialized so far. Fabio Natalucci heads the GFSR as well as IMF Global Financial Markets Monitoring. In this podc…

Just as many countries were beginning to feel the grip of the pandemic start to ease, another global calamity is threatening the recovery. In her customary curtain-raiser speech to the IMF-World Bank Spring Meetings, IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said the war in Ukraine has disrupted millions of lives and many aspects of the global eco…

Most people and virtually all businesses now use electronic money for their transactions, yet central banks are still dealing with what's known among economists as the paper currency problem, which limits central banks' ability to use deep negative rates to fight recessions. In this second episode of a two-part series on inflation, economists Miles…

Everyone feels the pinch when inflation is on the rise and so the pressure on central banks to manage inflation rates has grown exponentially in recent weeks. In this first podcast of a two-part series on inflation, distinguished economists Miles Kimball and Ruchir Agarwal discuss how a robust negative interest rate policy can help central banks be…

The pandemic has sparked an enormous upheaval in education around the world. But in India and many other low-income countries where remote learning is often not an option, children's education has simply fallen off the rails. Yamini Aiyar is President of the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi. In this podcast, Aiyar speaks with journalist Rhod…

The last two years have proven a test for the global financial system, and the nature of the crises is getting more complex by the day. In this podcast, Foreign Policy magazine's Ravi Agrawal asks the IMF's two top leaders how governments should respond to the growing number of challenges facing the global economy. Transcript: https://bit.ly/382IPK…

Governments with strong balance sheets are known to recover from shocks more quickly. Yet many of them don't have balance sheets, or even know what assets and liabilities they have. The IMF estimates these often-overlooked global public assets at twice the value of global GDP. Ian Ball is a professor at Victoria University in Wellington and behind …

As the world this week celebrates International Women's Day, hundreds of millions of women are living in conflict and fragility. IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva joined a special United Nations Security Council meeting to discuss women's economic inclusion as a key to building peace. In this podcast, Georgieva says women and girls are the…

In this episode of Women in Economics, economist Laura Carvalho speaks with journalist Rhoda Metcalfe about how growing up in Brazil in the 90s during its currency swings and hyperinflation drove her to become one of the country's most influential economists. Carvalho is a Professor at the Department of Economics at the University of Sao Paulo and …

Should the rich pay more taxes than the poor? Economists and public finance practitioners have traditionally focused on economic efficiency when answering questions like that, steering clear of any moral considerations that could be seen as subjective. But recent work by evolutionary moral psychologists suggests that a more human approach to policy…

As part of the IMF Exchange speaker series, London School of Economics Director, Minouche Shafik and IMF Managing Director, Kristalina Georgieva discuss how current economic trends are straining social safety nets and fueling disaffection among people across the globe. In her latest book What We Owe Each Other, Shafik argues the need for a new soci…

When was the last time you used cash? In his latest book, Eswar Prasad looks at a world, not that far off, where using cash will no longer be an option. Prasad is a professor of economics at Cornell University, and his book, The Future of Money, describes how digital currencies and other financial technologies are reshaping everything from consumer…

When the pandemic hit two years ago, millions of people quickly found themselves unable to work because of the nature of their jobs or because of the recession that ensued. But now, as economies are picking up- why are companies having such a hard time hiring workers? In this podcast, journalist Rhoda Metcalfe asks economists Carlo Pizzinelli and I…

Fragile and conflict-affected states are home to nearly 1 billion people and confront some of the greatest challenges among the world’s economies. 220 million people live within 40 miles from a major conflict event and 155 million globally are acutely food insecure. Franck Bousquet is the deputy director, coordinating the Fund's work in fragile and…

Spending public funds efficiently and effectively is a challenge for governments around the world, but weak public finance management systems are holding back growth and development in Africa. Ken Opalo studies African legislatures and policymaking at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. In this podcast, Opalo says public spending doe…

Much has been said and written about the dangers of government borrowing. In their new book, In Defense of Public Debt, economic historian Barry Eichengreen and his co-authors trace the evolution of sovereign debt from the wars of medieval Europe through the Covid-19 crisis, illustrating public debt's many positive uses, from reacting to financial …

While the world has been focused on the pandemic for the past two years, the rapid rise of Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias pose another threat to global public health. Nathaniel Counts is Senior VP for Behavioral Health Innovation at Mental Health America and Assistant Professor at Albert Einstein's School of Medicine. In this podcast, Co…