The world has witnessed transformational changes in recent years, not the least in technical parlance. With the massive amount of new and interdisciplinary concepts, the need has emerged to standardize and communicate emerging technical terms in languages other than English. The language Services Division of the IMF’s Corporate Services and Facilities Department prepared this thematic bulletin as a contribution to the international effort of linguists and translation experts, for the benefit of topical experts, member countries, professional translators and interpreters, and the general public. It is produced on the occasion of the 2023 Annual Meetings of the World Bank Group and the International Monetary Fund in Marrakesh, Morocco.

New technologies are driving transformational changes in the global financial system. Virtual currencies (VCs) and the underlying distributed ledger systems are among these. VCs offer many potential benefits, but also considerable risks. VCs could raise efficiency and in the long run strengthen financial inclusion. At the same time, VCs could be potential vehicles for money laundering, terrorist financing, tax evasion and fraud. While risks to the conduct of monetary policy seem less likely to arise at this stage given the very small scale of VCs, risks to financial stability may eventually emerge as the new technologies become more widely used. National authorities have begun to address these challenges and will need to calibrate regulation in a manner that appropriately addresses the risks without stifling innovation. As experience is gained, international standards and best practices could be considered to provide guidance on the most appropriate regulatory responses in different fields, thereby promoting harmonization and cooperation across jurisdictions.

This volume presents English, French, and Spanish words, phrases, and names of institutions most commonly encountered in IMF documents.

At the height of the Great Depression a number of leading U.S. economists advanced a proposal for monetary reform that became known as the Chicago Plan. It envisaged the separation of the monetary and credit functions of the banking system, by requiring 100% reserve backing for deposits. Irving Fisher (1936) claimed the following advantages for this plan: (1) Much better control of a major source of business cycle fluctuations, sudden increases and contractions of bank credit and of the supply of bank-created money. (2) Complete elimination of bank runs. (3) Dramatic reduction of the (net) public debt. (4) Dramatic reduction of private debt, as money creation no longer requires simultaneous debt creation. We study these claims by embedding a comprehensive and carefully calibrated model of the banking system in a DSGE model of the U.S. economy. We find support for all four of Fisher's claims. Furthermore, output gains approach 10 percent, and steady state inflation can drop to zero without posing problems for the conduct of monetary policy.

This note provides guidance to facilitate the staff’s advice on macroprudential policy in Fund surveillance. It elaborates on the principles set out in the “Key Aspects of Macroprudential Policy,” taking into account the work of international standard setters as well as the evolving country experience with macroprudential policy. The main note is accompanied by supplements offering Detailed Guidance on Instruments and Considerations for Low Income Countries

This seventh, revised edition of the IMF Glossary: English-French-Spanish contains approximately 4,000 records that are believed to be the most useful to translators dealing with IMF material. The main body of the Glossary consists of terms, phraseological units, and institutional titles covering areas such as macroeconomics, money and banking, public finance, taxation, balance of payments, statistics, accounting, and economic development. It contains terminology relating to the IMF's organization and operations, as well as from the Articles of Agreement, By-Laws, Rules and Regulations, and other major IMF publications. Since the Glossary is concept-based, synonyms are consolidated into one single entry. Cross- references refer to the main entry under which the various synonyms are listed ("see") and also draw the user's attention to terms that are related but not synonyms ("see also"). Currency units of countries and monetary unions, an IMF organizational chart in the three languages, and color-coded French and Spanish indexes are provided in appendixes.

The paper uses a combination of micro-level datasets to document the rise of income polarization—what some have referred to as the “hollowing out” of the income distribution—in the United States, since the 1970s. While in the initial decades more middle-income households moved up, rather than down, the income ladder, since the turn of the current century, most of polarization has been towards lower incomes. This result is striking and in contrast with findings of other recent contributions. In addition, the paper finds evidence that, after conditioning on income and household characteristics, the marginal propensity to consume from permanent changes in income has somewhat fallen in recent years. We assess the potential impacts of these trends on private consumption. During 1998-2013, the rise in income polarization and lower marginal propensity to consume have suppressed the level of real consumption at the aggregate level, by about 31⁄2 percent—equivalent to more than one year of consumption.

The concept of fiscal impulse is defined, discussed, and differentiated from measures that attempt to summarize the macroeconomic effects of fiscal policy. Two methodologies are briefly discussed and their corresponding measures presented for the G-7 countries over the ten-year period ending in 1989. Controversies about the measure are highlighted and potential improvements are also discussed.