A cutting-edge look at how accelerating financial change, from the end of cash to the rise of cryptocurrencies, will transform economies for better and worse. We think weÕve seen financial innovation. We bank from laptops and buy coffee with the wave of a phone. But these are minor miracles compared with the dizzying experiments now underway around the globe, as businesses and governments alike embrace the possibilities of new financial technologies. As Eswar Prasad explains, the world of finance is at the threshold of major disruption that will affect corporations, bankers, states, and indeed all of us. The transformation of money will fundamentally rewrite how ordinary people live. Above all, Prasad foresees the end of physical cash. The driving force wonÕt be phones or credit cards but rather central banks, spurred by the emergence of cryptocurrencies to develop their own, more stable digital currencies. Meanwhile, cryptocurrencies themselves will evolve unpredictably as global corporations like Facebook and Amazon join the game. The changes will be accompanied by snowballing innovations that are reshaping finance and have already begun to revolutionize how we invest, trade, insure, and manage risk. Prasad shows how these and other changes will redefine the very concept of money, unbundling its traditional functions as a unit of account, medium of exchange, and store of value. The promise lies in greater efficiency and flexibility, increased sensitivity to the needs of diverse consumers, and improved market access for the unbanked. The risk is instability, lack of accountability, and erosion of privacy. A lucid, visionary work, The Future of Money shows how to maximize the best and guard against the worst of what is to come.

This pamphlet is adapted from Chapter 1 of Silent Revolution: The International Monetary Fund, 1979-89, by the same author. That book is full of history of the evolution of the Fund during 11 years in which the institution truly came of age as a participant in the international financial system.

The global financial crisis experience shone a spotlight on the dangers of financial systems that have grown too big too fast. This note reexamines financial deepening, focusing on what emerging markets can learn from the advanced economy experience. It finds that gains for growth and stability from financial deepening remain large for most emerging markets, but there are limits on size and speed. When financial deepening outpaces the strength of the supervisory framework, it leads to excessive risk taking and instability. Encouragingly, the set of regulatory reforms that promote financial depth is essentially the same as those that contribute to greater stability. Better regulation—not necessarily more regulation—thus leads to greater possibilities both for development and stability.

Finance & Development, June 2020

This book seeks to provide objective analysis of the role and effectiveness of multilaterals in general and the IMF and World Bank in particular. The IMF is a multilateral financial institution with a mandate to promote financial and macroeconomic stability, cooperative economic policies, and a balanced growth of international trade. More than two fifths of its 185 members are low-income countries and many others have substantial pockets of poverty in their populations. Since economic development and the reduction of poverty are the most important economic challenges that these countries face, how can the IMF best help them? How can the imperative of macroeconomic and financial stability be reconciled with the requirements for sustained economic growth? This volume brings together the research of leading economists, political scientists, and historians to suggest ways for the IMF to address these issues effectively.

This chapter discusses various past and future aspects of the global economy. There has been a huge transformation of the global economy in the last several years. Articles on the future of energy in the global economy by Jeffrey Ball and on measuring inequality by Jonathan Ostry and Andrew Berg are also illustrated. Since the 2008 global crisis, global economists must change the way they look at the world.

This book provides an assessment of the role of the International Monetary Fund in poor countries. In recent years, a large portion of the work of the IMF has focused on the economies of low-income countries by aiming to create conditions conducive to poverty reduction and stable economic growth. More than two fifths of the IMF's 185 members are low-income countries and many others have substantial pockets of poverty in their populations. Since economic development and the reduction of poverty are the most important economic challenges that these countries face, how can the IMF best help them? How can the imperative of macroeconomic and financial stability be reconciled with the requirements for sustained economic growth? This volume brings together the research of leading economists, political scientists, and historians to suggest ways for the IMF to address these issues effectively

Research work by the IMF’s staff on the effectiveness of the country programs the organization supports, which has long been carried out, has intensified in recent years. IMF analysts have sought to “open up the black box” by more closely examining program design and implementation, as well as how these influence programs’ effectiveness. Their efforts have also focused on identifying the lending, signaling, and monitoring features of the IMF that may affect member countries’ economic performance. This book reports on a large portion of both the new and the continuing research. It concludes that IMF programs work best where domestic politics and institutions permit the timely implementation of the necessary measures and when a country is vulnerable to, but not yet in, a crisis. It points to the need for a wider recognition of the substantial diversity among IMF member countries and for programs to be tailored accordingly while broadly maintaining the IMF’s general principle of uniformity of treatment.

This paper presents stylized facts on financial development in the CCA countries relative to their EM and LIC peers and assesses how financial development can boost growth in the CCA. Drawing on IMF’s multidimensional index of financial development, we find that CCA countries have made progress following the independence in early 1990s. However, the progress was uneven across the CCA, resulting in a divergence of financial development over time and mixed performance relative to EM and LIC peers. Financial institutions have progressed the most, while financial markets remain underdevelped in most CCA countries except Kazakhstan. In terms of sub-indicators of financial development, financial access has expanded markedly, while the depth of financial intermediation has remained largely shallow and efficiency of financial intermediation has fluctuated over time. Standard growth regressions suggest that CCA countries with relatively lower level of financial development have scope to boost annual growth rates between 0.5-2.5 percent by reaching the level of financial development of frontier CCA countries.

Joyce traces the IMF's actions to promote international financial stability from the Bretton Woods era through the recent recession.