The global policy agenda that follows recalibrates priorities to meet the new reality we are facing. The IMF also continues to adjust to respond to the rapidly evolving needs of our membership. Our flexibility has been evident over the past two years of the COVID crisis: unprecedented emergency...

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the argument that debt relief would increase the incentive of a debtor country to make an adjustment effort (to invest) and that for this reason creditors may benefit by granting relief. It is shown that there are actually opposing incentive effects of...

Background. The case for sovereign state-contingent debt instruments (SCDIs) as a countercyclical and risk-sharing tool has been around for some time and remains appealing; but take-up has been limited. Earlier staff work had advocated the use of growth-indexed bonds in emerging markets and...

Reform package. Comprehensive reform of Fund governance-encompassing quotas, ministerial engagement and oversight, the size and composition of the Executive Board, voting rules, management selection, and staff diversity-is essential to enhancing the Fund's long-term legitimacy and effectiveness....

The paper explores the pros and cons of maintaining the current 'freely usable currency' criterion, and clarifies indicators for assessing it. The freely usable concept and its two key elements-currencies should be "widely used" and "widely traded"-are set out in the Articles and serve important...

The paper considers the merits of rules and discretion for monetary policy when the structure of the macroeconomic model and the probability distributions of disturbances are not well defined. It is argued that when it is costly to delay policy reactions to seldom-experienced shocks until formal...