A Few White Papers
you are currently viewing::IMF Working Paper-Understanding the Macroeconomic Effects of Natural DisastersFebruary 21, 2025-Summary As a result, output growth in AEs is not significantly affected by natural disasters. In contrast, the increase in government expenditure in emerging markets and developing countries (EMDEs) after a natural disaster is smaller and thus, unable to mitigate the contemporaneous negative effect on output growth (which mainly reflects the fall in investment in non-small-island EMDEs and in net exports in small-island EMDEs). In addition, the output recovery in the subsequent year does not fully offset the decline during the year of the disaster. Second, this paper assesses the role of pre-existing country characteristics in mitigating the adverse impact of natural disasters. The paper finds that small islands and countries with limited pre-disaster fiscal space tend to experience more significant declines in output growth following a natural disaster. Source: imf.org |
IMF Working Paper Fiscal-monetary Interactions: The Role of Debt Maturity
October 13, 2026-Summary
This paper examines how the maturity structure of sovereign debt shapes fiscal-monetary interactions in the United States. Using exogenous monetary policy shocks and nonlinear local projections, we show that debt maturity influences both the fiscal consequences of monetary tightening and its macroeconomic transmission.
IMF Working Paper-Fear and Shortages: Identifying Geopolitical Risk and Supply Disruptions in Energy Markets
October 12, 2026-Summary
This paper proposes a new high-frequency structural vector autoregression model that can disentangle the drivers of oil and natural gas prices in real time. In particular, it separately identifies actual supply disruptions from geopolitical-risk shocks that raise expectations of future supply shortfalls. Local projection analysis shows that macroeconomic effects differ across shocks.
IMF Working Paper-International Stablecoin Flows, Capital Controls and Currency Crises
October 2, 2026--Summary
This paper constructs a country-level panel of estimated international stablecoin flows, covering 188 countries, totaling $21.4 trillion in gross flows between 2018 and 2025. Activity is disproportionately concentrated in emerging markets and developing economies, which hold three quarters of stablecoins.
IMF Working Paper-Too Much Yet Not Enough: Housing Segmentation and Household Consumption in China
September 18, 2026--Summary
China's urban housing system is structurally segmented: market-based residential housing accounts for only about 40 percent of occupied urban dwellings, with the remainder split between rental and legacy housing acquired outside the market. Using 2000-2020 Population Censuses and the 2019 China Household Finance Survey, this paper documents that housing tenure is systematically associated with distinct household consumption patterns.
IMF Working Paper-How Digital Lending Shapes Bank Risk and Competition: Evidence from an Emerging Economy
September 18, 2026--Summary
This paper examines the effect of alternative digital lending-defined as digital credit provision by non‑bank financial intermediaries (NBFIs)-on bank and systemic risk taking and competition. The paper focuses on Sociedades Financieras Populares (SOFIPOs) which constitute a regulated and well‑documented NBFI segment allowing an empirical assessment of the relationship between digital non-bank lending expansion and bank outcomes.
IMF Working Paper-Macroeconomics of War and Recovery
September 4, 2026--Summary
This paper studies the macroeconomic dynamics of conflicts and post-conflict recovery using a newly assembled global dataset covering 194 countries, including 170 conflict onsets and 158 conflict terminations, over the period 1946-2024. Using a local-projection difference-in-differences framework complemented by geocoded firm-level evidence, we trace the evolution of macroeconomic aggregates around conflict onset and termination.
IMF Working Paper-Demand for Dollars: Evidence from Survey Expectations
September 4, 2026--Summary
We study the determinants of US dollar demand across market participants and traded instruments using survey-based exchange rate and macroeconomic expectations. To empirically establish the relevance of survey-based expectations for currency flows, we leverage granular foreign exchange trading data and present three main findings.
IMF Staff Country Report Singapore: Selected Issues
July 20, 2026-Private consumption ratios differ markedly across advanced economies, with Singapore recording one of the lowest of its peer group. Using a sample of 31 advanced economies and a rich set of potential drivers, the analysis finds that slow-moving structural factors like demographics, economic structure, and development levels are important correlates of these differences, while cyclical factors appear to play a more limited role.
Graying Asia: How Aging Is Reshaping Banking
July 17, 2026--Summary
This paper explores how demographic shifts, particularly population aging, are reshaping banking in Asia-Pacific’s bank-dominated financial systems. Using household surveys as well as bank-level and country-level panel data, we show that aging populations are associated, with shifts in bank portfolios away from traditional loans (with lower loan-to-deposit and loan-to-asset ratios), driven by changes in households' financial behavior.
The Changing Landscape of Financial Integration in Asia-Pacific
July 17, 2026--Summary
Asia-Pacific has undergone a profound transformation over the past few decades, increasing its share in global trade and GDP. This paper assesses to what extent Asia-Pacific's role in global finance has expanded commensurately and whether it has become more integrated by systematically analyzing crossborder financial data.
