IMF Podcasts

Productivity has been the driving force behind the five- sometimes six-day workweek, but there is a growing body of evidence that shows a shorter week is equally, if not more productive in many respects. Juliet Schor is a champion of the four-day week and led the charge in the early 90s with her book The Overworked American , which studies the pitfalls of choosing money over time. Schor is an econ...

Behind any good policy stands good data. And as the global economy becomes increasingly digitalized, effective policy and regulation are critical to ensure a stable and equitable financial system. Jim Tebrake is Deputy Director and heads the data and methodology efforts in the IMF Statistics Department. In this podcast, Tebrake says the world of digital money is changing quickly and statisticians...

Artificial intelligence has the power to transform society in so many ways, but only a small number of companies in an even smaller number of countries hold the keys to AI's development. So what happens when a narrow swath of humanity makes choices that will impact everyone else? Stephanie Bell is a Senior Research Scientist at the Partnership for AI and led the creation of the Guidelines for Shar...

Artificial intelligence is changing the way we work and for many it's scary. But for teachers in India's million-plus schools, AI is a welcome partner in solving the learning poverty problem. Shankar Maruwada is the Co-founder and CEO of EkStep Foundation, which develops AI to help improve the public education system. In this podcast, Maruwada and journalist Rhoda Metcalfe discuss how AI can close...

The pace at which artificial intelligence is transforming jobs is astounding, but while it boasts higher productivity AI is also increasing wage inequality. When workers are replaced by machines, real wages decline, and the owners of capital prosper. So who owns AI and how should its benefits be distributed? In this podcast, the IMFs Andrew Berg and Maryam Vaziri discuss AI's inequality problem, t...

There's no question that Artificial Intelligence will increase productivity- but at what cost? What happens when systems out-perform not only factory workers but society's most esteemed professions? Daniel Susskind has written two thought-provoking books on how AI is changing the nature of work and what tomorrow's labor market will look like. Susskind is a research professor at King's College Lond...

Global warming is wreaking havoc on so many levels, but climate action is costly and presents policymakers with difficult tradeoffs. High debt, rising interest rates, and weaker growth prospects make public finances harder to balance and climate goals harder to achieve. This is where fiscal policy and climate mitigation meet and why the IMF Fiscal Affairs Department is trying to help countries man...

Carbon pricing is steadily emerging as one of the most viable solutions to reducing global emissions, but shedding its contentious past to build a global consensus is still a work in progress. Economist Ian Parry has championed the idea of carbon pricing long before it was fashionable- or even considered feasible by more than a handful of countries. Parry is the principal environmental fiscal poli...

Having access to nature can improve lives. Walking through the forest or by a lake occasionally is proven to have both physical and psychological benefits. But nature is a resource that is undervalued in our economies, and all too often left off the balance sheet. Catherine Kling says determining the true economic value of nature will help foster its preservation. Kling is an environmental economi...

The world of money is changing fast and central banks are at the very center of that change. Shaktikanta Das is the Governor of the Reserve Bank of India, which is responsible for regulating currency and securing monetary stability for the world's 5th largest economy. Das is also an innovator and a pioneer when it comes to Central Bank Digital Currencies or CBDCs. In this podcast, Das sits down wi...

Navigating an economy through multiple crises is not for the faint-hearted. Policy responses must be quick- often with little to go on, and decisions have lasting effects. Nigel Clarke has been Jamaica's Minister of Finance since 2018 and led its economy through the pandemic as well as devastating natural disasters caused by climate change. In this podcast, Clarke sits down with IMF Western Hemisp...

With the years of access to cheap money behind them and the effects of climate change and geopolitical tensions only getting worse, what does resilience look like for emerging market economies? This year's Per Jacobbson lecture brings together three influential thinkers to discuss how countries can work towards economic resilience in an era of greater uncertainty. The talk features Lesetja Kganyag...

Millions of families around the world- even some countries, rely on workers living abroad to keep their economies afloat. In fact, global remittances reached a record $647 billion in 2022—three times that of official development assistance. Dilip Ratha is lead economist for migration and remittances at the World Bank. In this podcast, journalist Rhoda Metcalfe asks Ratha about his own experiences...

Most economies have shown resilience through the steepest series of rate hikes in decades. But inflation remains stubbornly high in some countries, which is proving a challenge for global monetary policy going forward. The latest Global Financial Stability Report (GFSR) examines all the worrying trends including the corporate world's dwindling cash buffers and the risk of underinvesting in climate...

International cooperation is weakening. The bridges that connect countries are corroding as trade and investment barriers are rising, and Africa stands to suffer the biggest economic losses from severe fragmentation. IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva kicked off the 2023 Annual Meetings in Marrakech with her customary curtain raiser speech from Cote d'Ivoire. It's the first time since 1973...

A functioning economy provides people with access to credit, insurance, and, among other things, investment opportunities. But what happens in poor communities where they are landless and have no wealth? Eliana La Ferrara says the social structure within those communities offers the collateral they need to make the economy work. La Ferrara is a Professor of Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School...

Credit cards that offer rewards like travel discounts seem a good idea, but rewards cards can be costly for anyone who keeps a running balance. So should there be rules around who gets one? IMF economist Andrea Presbitero is coauthor of a study that looks at the distributional impact of rewards cards. In this podcast, Presbitero says while the high interest rates and penalties associated with thes...

Abdellatif Jouahri est le gouverneur de Banque Al-Maghrib depuis 2003 et l'homme derrière les grandes réformes qui ont fait du Maroc l'une des économies les plus importantes de la région du Moyen-Orient et de l'Afrique du Nord (MENA). Dans cet épisode, Jouahri s'entretient avec Taline Koranchelian, directrice adjointe du Département Moyen-Orient et Asie centrale du FMI pour évoquer sa longue et ém...

The dramatic opening up of markets to international trade over the past 30 years has been a boon to many developing economies but it has not benefitted everyone. Nina Pavcnik grew up in Yugoslavia and witnessed firsthand the effects of open markets on the lives of people across the border. Pavcnik is now Professor of Economics and International Studies at Dartmouth College and has become an author...

While import prices account for much of Europe's inflation, its outlook largely depends on how companies absorb wage gains as higher prices erode workers' purchasing power. IMF economist Frederik Toscani studies inflation and monetary policy in the Euro Area and is coauthor of a new paper that breaks inflation down into labor costs, import costs, taxes, and profits. In this podcast, Toscani says c...

Nigeria's eNaira was the first Central Bank Digital Currency in Africa and only the second in the world when it launched in October 2021, but a growing number of countries across the globe are now planning to follow suit with their own CBDCs. What can they learn from Nigeria's experience? Jookyung Ree is an economist in the IMF African Department and assigned to Nigeria when the CBDC was introduce...

Since their inception in 2008, the contentious rise of crypto assets has been dramatic. Their market value has been as high as $3 trillion and about $50 million is transacted in crypto every day. But what does this brave new world of cryptographically-protected distributed ledgers mean for traditional tax systems? Ruud De Mooij is Deputy Director of the IMF Fiscal Affairs Department and heads its...

The passage of the Inflation Reduction Act in the United States unleashed its largest investment in climate and energy ever. But it also left many countries questioning some of its protectionist provisions, accusing the US of bending, if not breaking international trade rules under the WTO. So how do we move forward on climate without going backward on trade? Noah Kaufman says international trade...

The history of economics has largely been written by men about men. Even when the economics of family became a burgeoning field of study in the 1970s, the woman's role was hardly talked about. Claudia Goldin is a pioneer in the field of gender economics and her latest book Career and Family places women squarely at the center of the family economics story. Goldin is the Henry Lee Professor of Econ...

As rising geopolitical tensions chip away at globalization, will a more fragmented world mean stronger regional pacts? Economist Michele Ruta says regionalism in a time of conflict is unlikely to triumph, but rather is likely to change. The trend toward strengthening ties with friends and loosening them with non-friends is making regional trade less about integration and more about discrimination....