The Unassuming Economist

From andina:

“The President of the Republic Dina Boluarte on Thursday reaffirmed Peru’s commitment to fostering sustainable, inclusive, and robust economic growth during the Women’s Empowerment Forum held as part of APEC Peru 2024 currently underway in Lima.

Mrs. Boluarte emphasized that, with women making up half of the population in the region, empowering and including them is vital for driving economic growth.

Likewise, the top official highlighted the importance of engaging in ongoing dialogue with the private sector to identify more and better opportunities for women’s economic empowerment.

The president noted that, under Peru’s leadership of APEC this year, significant progress has been made toward building consensus on a comprehensive agenda focused on empowering vulnerable sectors, particularly women.

The Head of State underscored that these agreements will translate into “tangible actions that the member economies will implement starting next year.”

“Today, we renew our commitment to solid, secure, sustainable, and inclusive growth, placing citizens —especially those who have yet to reach their full potential— at the heart of our efforts,” she stated.”

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From a book chapter by Hites Ahir and Prakash Loungani:

“In April 2008, the IMF’s flagship publication World Economic Outlook provided estimates of overvaluation in house prices for a group of advanced economies. Though house prices had fallen in the United States in the preceding years, they had continued to rise in many other countries. The IMF’s analysis suggested that, with only a few exceptions, house prices were overvalued by between 10% and 30%, as shown by the bars in Fig. 7.1. The dots show the decline in house prices that occurred over the subsequent 4 years. In many countries where the IMF had assessed house prices to be overvalued, house prices did indeed fall quite significantly—these cases include Denmark, Ireland, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom.

Fast forward to the present: The IMF’s Global House Price Index—a simple average of real house prices for 57 countries—is now back to its level before the global financial crisis (GFC). The index has been inching up since 2012, making the duration of the run-up comparable to one in 2001–06 that ended in house price collapses in many countries. Is it time to worry again about overvaluation?

This chapter describes the evolution of IMF monitoring—“surveillance” in the IMF’s jargon—of housing markets from 2008 to the present. Section 2 describes how the IMF has assessed overvaluation in housing markets and the advice it offered on the policy tools needed to manage house price booms. It lays out the IMF’s ‘corporate view’ or ‘house view’ that macroprudential policies must be the first line of defense to deal with house price booms. Section 3 takes up the issue of whether the run-up in house prices over the past few years should be a source of worry. Section 4 describes how IMF surveillance has adapted as housing markets have become more ‘glocalized’ and developments at the sub-national level gain greater prominence.1 Section 5 has some concluding observations.”

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From a paper by Gail Cohen, Joao Tovar Jalles, Prakash Loungani, and Pietro Pizzuto:

“This paper provides cross-country evidence on the relationship between growth in CO₂ emissions and real GDP growth from 1960 to 2018. The focus is on distinguishing longer-run trends in this relationship from short-run cyclical fluctuations, and on documenting changes in these relationships over time. Using two filtering techniques for separating trend and cycle, we find that long-run trends show evidence of decoupling in richer nations—particularly in European countries—but not yet in developing economies, and that there is stronger evidence of decoupling over the 1990 to 2018 sub-period than over the earlier 1960 to 1989 sub-period. There is also a strong cyclical relationship between emissions and real GDP growth in both advanced and developing economies, and the strength of this relationship has not weakened much over time. The cyclical relationship is largely symmetric: emissions fall about as much during recessions as they rise during booms. The transition to a low-carbon economy will thus require continued progress not only in bringing down trend emissions, particularly in developing economies, but also in taming the increase in emissions that occurs during the boom phase of the business cycle.”

From a paper by Adnan Mazarei and Prakash Loungani:

“Coverage. This paper assesses the IMF’s engagement with countries in the Middle East and
Central Asian Department (MCD) from February 2020 to April 2021, drawing on the experience of
Kyrgyz Republic, Morocco, Tunisia, and Uzbekistan. The paper also briefly describes MCD’s policy
advice over the course of the pandemic and the department’s strategy for helping the region.

Appropriate pivot in surveillance. While staff’s initial worries about the region were centered
around the sharp spike in global risk aversion—portfolio flows to the region declined by nearly
$2 billion in February–March—they quickly pivoted to healthcare and humanitarian
considerations. The April 2020 Regional Economic Outlook (REO) emphasized the immediate
priority of containing the spread of the virus and advocated fiscal easing to accommodate
necessary spending.

Rapid and effective financing. By June 2020, 15 countries in the region had received
emergency or upper credit tranche (UCT) financing from the Fund, and the Fund’s financing
exposure to the region increased by more than 65 percent in 2020. Our case studies of
Kyrgyz Republic, Tunisia, and Uzbekistan paint a positive picture overall of the value to countries
of the rapid provision of Fund emergency financing (EF). The first two received the maximum
permitted under Fund access limits despite some concerns about policies.”

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From the World Bank:

“The report outlines an agenda to strengthen information and communication technology(ICT) services in Rwanda, where network coverage has improved but broadband uptake remains low. Rwanda needs to boost digital service use among consumers and the private sector by increasing access to affordable smart devices, expanding digital skills initiatives, and improving broadband quality and affordability through network upgrades, densification, and stricter competition enforcement. Key regulatory measures include a reference interconnection over (RIO), better spectrum management for next-gen technologies like 5G, and infrastructure sharing to lower service costs. While recent laws on personal data protection and cybersecurity have created a solid regulatory foundation, their implementation is still in progress. To achieve global standards, Rwanda must enhance regulations related to nonpersonal data portability and net neutrality, as current rules restrict cross-border data flows vitalfor digital market integration and e-commerce. This effort should be supported by regional andglobal collaboration on regulatory harmonization. Further public investment is needed to develop foundational digital public infrastructure, such as identifcation, trusted data sharing, and digital payments systems, to scale digital services safely and affordably. Additionally, improvements in the enabling framework and skills development are crucial for wider adoption of technologies like artificial intelligence (AI).”