IMF's Communications Department Director Julie Kozack discusses the latest developments related to key economic issues, and answer questions on Argentina, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Lebanon, Egypt, Kenya, the Caribbean region, Nigeria, and more.
We project global economic growth at 3.3% this year and next. Learn how policymakers can address challenges and boost growth in the latest World Economic Outlook Update.
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 individual incomes. Gethin is an economist in the World Bank Development Research Group working on growth and inequality and has sought to quantify the economic value of education as it relates to global poverty reduction. In this podcast, Gethin says investing in education advances those who pursue degrees and those who don’t.
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 Sciences. Johnson, a former IMF chief economist, now a professor at MIT in the Sloan School of Management, shares the award with James Robinson and Daron Acemoglu, who’s also coauthor of his latest book Power and Progress, which challenges the assumption that technology equals progress. In this podcast, Johnson says when controlled by a select few, tech innovation can be self-serving and risk undermining the institutions that make it possible.
As urbanization continues to grow worldwide, affordable housing is a rare commodity in many cities. São Paulo, 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 São Paulo’s latest attempt at strengthening its housing strategy. In this podcast, Johnson says the city looked to its largely abandoned downtown core to address its housing woes.
