PODCAST · business
IMF Podcasts
by IMF Podcasts
Listen to the World's top economists discuss their research and deconstruct global economic trends.
Episodes
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Mehran Gul on the Innovation Blindspot
While much of the big technological innovations of the past decade have emerged from the United States and China, innovation happens everywhere. The Swiss train system, for instance, has run entirely on renewable energy since the early 1960s. Why do so many prominent tech leaders now choose to…
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Dani Rodrik on Rethinking Development
Manufacturing and industrialization have long been the development strategy for many countries in Asia. But while the approach has spurred growth and lifted millions out of poverty, most jobs remain in the untraded services sector. In this podcast, Dani Rodrik says that making employment in...
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Ha-Joon Chang on Infant Industry Protection
Today's South Korean economy is a far cry from what Ha-Joon Chang was born into. But growing up, he witnessed the remarkable transformation of a largely agrarian society into an industrial powerhouse, albeit under a military dictatorship. In this podcast, the economist and best-selling author...
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Krishna Srinivasan on Asia's Next Chapter
Asia has been the poster child for moving farm workers into urban manufacturing jobs to increase productivity, but is that model still the growth path? In this podcast, IMF Asia and Pacific Department head Krishna Srinivasan discusses his Finance & Development article, "Asia's New Growth Model,"...
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Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas on the Story Behind the Number
Inflation pressures were already brewing when Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas stepped in as IMF Chief Economist in January 2022, but rising geopolitical tensions soon added fuel to the fire, and inflation remained a challenge throughout his tenure. In this podcast, outgoing Chief Gourinchas reflects on...
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Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas on the Story Behind the Number
Inflation pressures were already brewing when Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas stepped in as IMF Chief Economist in January 2022, but rising geopolitical tensions soon added fuel to the fire, and inflation remained a challenge throughout his tenure. In this podcast, outgoing Chief Gourinchas reflects on...
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Jeffry Frieden: The Cost of Geoeconomic Coercion
As geopolitical tensions rise, countries like to flex their economic muscle. But as appealing as they might be, sanctions, tariffs, and export bans come at a price. Jeffry Frieden is a professor of international and public affairs and political science at Columbia University. In this podcast, he...
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Trade among Geopolitical Rivals: Michele Ruta
Increased trade integration between economic superpowers shaped our globalized world, but that world we've known for the past three decades is becoming increasingly fragmented. What happens to those trade relationships when countries disengage? Michele Ruta is the IMF expert on trade and global...
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Nationalizations Get Another Look: Nicholas Mulder
State-owned enterprises have long been viewed by economists as a bad idea due to proven inefficiencies and mismanagement. But is handing over key resources and industries to the private sector really the answer? Economic historian Nicholas Mulder says, with all the geopolitical risks in the world...
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Gracelin Baskaran on the Race for Minerals
The recent scramble for the minerals that go into our electric vehicles, solar panels, and defense systems has exposed vulnerabilities in the supply chains. Mineral markets are complex, spanning dozens of materials found around the world, but the real challenge is processing. More than 90 percent...
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Geoeconomics Revisited: Josh Lipsky and Matteo Maggiori
As global powers face rising geopolitical tensions, sanctions, export controls, and tariffs are once again tools of leverage, marking the resurgence of geoeconomics, where economic policy and national security converge. This approach to business was largely abandoned by the West after the Cold…
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Barry Eichengreen and Chima Simpson-Bell on Currencies that Shine
When global volatility increases, so does the demand for the dollar. When countries face sanctions, they rush for gold. But while the two have been the most common reserve currencies for decades, surprising alternatives are emerging. UC Berkeley professor and author Barry Eichengreen, along with...
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Eswar Prasad on Escaping the Doom Loop
When esteemed economist and author Eswar Prasad set out to write his latest book, it was to be about the promise of some recent trends within the world's economic and power structures, but he found something darker. The Doom Loop is about what happens when the positive forces that normally bring...
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Taxing Bad Habits: Christoph Rosenberg
While it is true that death and taxes are unavoidable, good tax policies can help delay the inevitable. So-called sin taxes on alcohol, tobacco, sugar, and other harmful products can raise revenues and reduce public healthcare spending. In this podcast, economist Christoph Rosenberg says sin…
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Amadou Sy on Why Africa is Keeping its Debt Closer to Home
African economies began tapping into overseas markets for funding in the early 2000s, after debt burdens had been alleviated by the Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative. However, surging interest rates on dollar- and euro-denominated loans in recent years have prompted countries to…
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The Debt Reckoning: Rodrigo Valdés and Era Dabla-Norris
Unprecedented debt levels are pressing governments to make tough choices. While aging populations demand more public spending, resources are stretched thin, and the days of cheap borrowing that allowed the debt burden to be kicked down the road are behind us. Rodrigo Valdés and Era Dabla-Norris...
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Johan Norberg on What Makes and Breaks Golden Eras
The most prosperous of civilizations were the most open. The Romans, for example, expanded their empire by integrating the populations they conquered, creating a melting pot of new ideas. Johan Norberg's latest book, Peak Human, examines the rise and fall of seven golden age civilizations. In…
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Enrico Letta: Harnessing Europe's Single Market
There is strength in numbers, and the idea of European integration through a single market was to capitalize on the EU as a whole. However, the single market is a product of the early 90s, and EU member states now appear reticent to pool sovereignty to the degree required to counter the...
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Claudia Sahm on how Private Data can Augment Official Statistics
While official statistics compiled by government agencies are still considered the most reliable, policymakers are increasingly using private data to get around their limitations. Claudia Sahm is a former principal economist at the Federal Reserve Board of Governors and has studied the growing…
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Governor Chang Yong Rhee on Bank of Korea's Innovative Approach
Price stability is the main goal for central banks, and monetary policy is how they achieve it. However, societies are always in flux, and central bankers who pay close attention to emerging trends are more likely to make better policy decisions. Bank of Korea Governor Chang Yong Rhee has…
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Pablo Peña on why AI is No Match for Human Capital
While artificial intelligence continues to outperform our human abilities in many areas, Pablo Peña believes critical thinking and curiosity are what will keep us in the driver's seat. AI can only draw on human-produced knowledge, Peña says, "The version of AI that we know now is only a...
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Dante Disparte on Stablecoins and the Future of Finance
Technology is often what drives big changes, but innovations like cryptocurrencies and blockchain are transforming the world of money at breakneck speed. While the volatility of digital currencies like Bitcoin has kept it out of traditional banking systems, stablecoin is gaining ground in the…
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Marc Palen on Peace Economics and Trade
Maintaining good relations promotes trade, but can trade repair bad relations? Marc Palen examines how Britain's repeal of the Corn Laws in the mid-1800s sparked its interest in free trade and the idea of economic interdependence for a peaceful and prosperous world. Palen, an archaeologist,...
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Holding Steady: Athene Laws on sub-Saharan Africa's Outlook
Sub-Saharan Africa is holding its own despite a deteriorating global trade and aid landscape. The latest outlook projects growth to remain steady at 4.1 percent this year with a modest pickup in 2026. While the region has once again proven its resilience, what will it take to realize its full...
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Gordon Hanson on Shifting Trade Alliances
It's not unusual for countries to reevaluate trade relationships as the global economy evolves. However, the persistent uncertainty brought on by tariffs has prompted entire regions to reconsider long-established alliances and rethink new ones that were unimaginable only a year ago. Gordon…
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Kenneth Rogoff on Dollar Dominance
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…
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Where Startups Do Roam: Swati Bhatt
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...
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Chady El Khoury on the Virtual Reality of Financial Crime
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…
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Danny Quah on Rethinking Multilateralism
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…
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Grit and Luck: Gita Gopinath Reflects on her Career and Roles at the Fund
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,...
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Carl Benedikt Frey on AI and Growth
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…
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Karen Dynan on Regaining Lost Ground in Policy Influence
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...
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Women in Economics: Stefanie Stantcheva on Thoughts that Matter
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...
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Diaa Noureldin on Growth Prospects in an Aging World
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...
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Recovery Interrupted: Sub-Saharan Africa's Outlook
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...
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Ulrike Malmendier on Making Germany Grow Again
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...
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Malaysia Bank Governor Abdul Rasheed Ghaffour on Navigating Uncertainty
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…
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Argentina Bank Governor Santiago Bausili on Addressing Imbalances
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…
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Xavier Jaravel on Democratizing Innovation to Spur Growth
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...
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Amory Gethin Measures the Economic Value of Education
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...
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Karthik Sastry on Animal Spirits and the Economy
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...
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Oren Cass on the Invisible Hand
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...
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Driving Change: Rumana Huque on the Real Costs of Bangladesh's Tobacco Dependency
Driving Change: Women-Led Development Economics from the Ground Up The International Economic Association's Women in Leadership in Economics Initiative (IEA-WE) connects women economists worldwide and helps showcase their important empirical research, especially in developing countries. IMF...
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Sanjeev Gupta on Health Financing
The pandemic was a brutal reminder of how crucial public health systems are, yet health budgets in many countries are still underfunded. Developing economies generally do not allocate sufficient domestic resources to health and external financing is becoming increasingly difficult to secure....
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Simon Johnson on Technology, Institutions and Prosperity
Countries with better institutions are more prosperous. A truism perhaps, but then why are they so hard to build and sustain? That is the question that Simon Johnson has sought to explain since the fall of communism and the basis for the research that won him the 2024 Nobel Prize in Economic...
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Elizabeth Johnson on Fixing Sao Paolo's Housing Deficit
As urbanization continues to grow worldwide, affordable housing is a rare commodity in many cities. Sao Paolo, South America's biggest city, has gained over 2 million new residents in the past decade alone. Elizabeth Johnson heads Brazil research at TS Lombard and has been studying Sao Paolo's...
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Deniz Igan on The Housing Affordability Crunch
While housing markets play a significant role in economies, new research shows houses across 40 countries are less affordable than at any time since the 2008 financial crisis. IMF economist Deniz Igan helped develop the Housing Affordability Index. In this podcast, she says the pandemic triggered...
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Driving Change: Ipek Ilkkaracan on Why Investing in Care Pays Off
Driving Change: Women-Led Development Economics from the Ground Up The International Economic Association's Women in Leadership in Economics Initiative (IEA-WE) connects women economists worldwide and helps showcase their important empirical research, especially in developing countries. IMF...
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Driving Change: Rose Ngugi on how Indices are giving Kenya an Edge
Driving Change: Women-Led Development Economics from the Ground Up The International Economic Association's Women in Leadership in Economics Initiative (IEA-WE) connects women economists worldwide and helps showcase their important empirical research, especially in developing countries. IMF...
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Driving Change: Marcela Eslava on Latin America's Social Security Woes
Driving Change: Women-Led Development Economics from the Ground Up The International Economic Association's Women in Leadership in Economics Initiative (IEA-WE) connects women economists worldwide and helps showcase their important empirical research, especially in developing countries. IMF...
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IMF Podcasts currently has 703 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
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Listen to the World's top economists discuss their research and deconstruct global economic trends.
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