While the US dollar has been at the top of its game for decades, new players are testing its reign. Chess grandmaster-turned-economist Kenneth Rogoff has long cautioned of the dangers that high debt and fiscal burdens could have on the world's favorite reserve currency, and in his latest book, Our Dollar, Your Problem, he says its share of global r…

The US is a breeding ground for startups, and California has been the center of that universe since the dot-com boom in the late 1990s. But rising costs, tighter quarters, and increasing bureaucracy have many tech innovators seeking greener pastures, well beyond Silicon Valley. Princeton University's Swati Bhatt has been studying the evolution of A…

While countries came together in the late 80s to fight money laundering and the financing of terrorism, technology and the advent of virtual currencies have further complicated the tracking of illicit financial flows across borders. Over $51 billion in cryptocurrency was used by criminals last year to circumvent traditional banking regulations. Cha…

Bringing nations together to maintain peace and security and raise living standards for all seemed a utopian idea in the early 20th century. Still, geopolitics, economics and vision by world leaders eventually came together to make it a reality. But what happens when the great powers that have been supporting the multilateral system decide it's not…

A lot has happened in the global economy since 2019, and few people know that better than Gita Gopinath. As the IMF Chief Economist and subsequently the institution's First Deputy Managing Director, she navigated unprecedented global crises, including the pandemic and the ensuing great lockdown, wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, inflation, and g…

As tech innovation, particularly in the field of AI, is increasingly focused on a few key players, the industries benefiting from these tools have also become more concentrated, which Carl Benedikt Frey says could weigh on growth. Frey is an associate professor of AI and Work at Oxford University, and his latest book, How Progress Ends, suggests th…

There was a time when economic expertise ruled policy debates at virtually all levels of government. And while trade, taxation, and other important policies are still guided by economic analysis, economists increasingly feel sidelined by politics. In her former roles as chief economist at the US Treasury Department and senior economist at the White…

Public resistance to new policies often leaves policymakers scratching their heads. What seems a perfectly reasonable policy to a government is often perceived by its citizenry as regressive. Stefanie Stantcheva's multidisciplinary approach to research digs deep into the minds of people at the receiving end to help design better policies. Stantchev…

Most advanced economies are witnessing their populations age and labor forces shrink, and the same trend is expected to hold for the largest emerging economies within the decade. So the largely touted demographic dividend of previous decades is making way for a demographic drag. Diaa Noureldin is an economist in the World Economic Studies division …

After four long years of numerous crises, sub-Saharan Africa's hard-won recovery has been disrupted by yet another shock. The sudden shift in the global outlook has clouded the region's short-term prospects and significantly complicated policy making. Economist Andrew Tiffin and his team produce the IMF Regional Economic Outlook for sub-Saharan Afr…

While the German economy has been one of Europe's strongest for decades, its performance in recent years has fallen short of expectations. Why is this once economic powerhouse now lagging? Ulrike Malmendier is a professor of economics and finance at the University of California, Berkeley, and serves on the German Council of Economic Advisors to the…

Malaysia is one of Southeast Asia's strongest economies and has recently been lauded for its ability to keep inflation in check. But Malaysia is not immune to the rising global trade tensions and uncertainty of late. In this podcast, IMF Asia and Pacific Department head Krishna Srinivasan sits down with Bank Negara Malaysia Governor Abdul Rasheed G…

After years of economic turmoil, Argentina's central bank chief has doubled down on efforts to restore confidence in the Argentine peso and normalize its economy. In this podcast, Governor Santiago Bausili and IMF Western Hemisphere Department head, Rodrigo Valdés discuss the challenging process of stabilizing Argentina's bi-monetary economy. The c…

Never underestimate the value of a good idea. Ideas are the starting point for innovation; few things fuel economic growth more than innovation. However, most of today's innovators emerge from a narrow demographic group with specific backgrounds, which Xavier Jaravel says creates the phenomena of "Lost Einsteins" and "Lost Marie Curies". Jaravel is…

Economists have long surmised that people's knowledge and skills contribute significantly to economic development, but to what degree can access to an education change lives? Amory Gethin has compiled data from surveys from more than 150 countries to measure what economists have never measured before: the correlation between education and individua…

While we like to think our financial decisions are based on logic, the truth is, they are largely driven by emotion. So when John Maynard Keynes looked for methods to measure economic fluctuations, animal spirits were a key ingredient. Karthik Sastry is a macroeconomist and assistant professor at Princeton University. In this podcast, he says perso…

Modern economics was built on ideas spelled out by Adam Smith in his 18th-century The Wealth of Nations. But while he used the term only once in that economic treatise, Smith is most remembered for "the invisible hand," a metaphor Oren Cass says has wrongly been associated with the idea that the pursuit of profit is always socially beneficial and t…