Macrofinancial linkages have long been at the core of the IMF's mandate to oversee the stability of the global financial system. With the advent of the economic crisis, the Fund has drawn on this research in order to contribute to critical debates on the nature of appropriate policy responses at both the national and multilateral levels. The current juncture offers a good opportunity to take stock of this body of research by IMF staff and to share it with a wider audience, particularly sin...

The crisis has shifted the policy consensus away from the “benign neglect” view that it is better to pick up the pieces after a bust than try to prevent a real-estate boom in the first place. Yet, a call for a more preventive policy action raises more questions than it provides answers. What kind of indicators should trigger policy intervention to stop or slow down a real estate boom? Even assuming policymakers were fairly certain that intervention were warranted, what would be the policy ...

Today's most all-inclusive reference of technical indicators--what they are and how to use them to add value to any trading programTechnical analysis has become an incredibly popular investors' tool for gauging market strength and forecasting short-term direction for both markets and individual stocks. But as markets have changed dramatically, so too have technical indicators and elements. The Encyclopedia of Technical Market Indicators provides an alphabe...

The IMF and the World Bank have integrated a large number of countries into the world economy by requiring governments to open up to global trade, investment, and capital. They have not done this out of pure economic zeal. Politics and their own rules and habits explain much of why they have presented globalization as a solution to challenges they have faced in the world economy.—from the IntroductionThe greatest success of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank has bee...

A Federal Reserve insider pulls back the curtain on the secretive institution that controls America’s economyAfter correctly predicting the housing crash of 2008 and quitting her high-ranking Wall Street job, Danielle DiMartino Booth was surprised to find herself recruited as an analyst at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, one of the regional centers of our complicated and widely misunderstood Federal Reserve System. She was shocked to discover just how much tunn...

This book, edited by Bruce J. Summers, makes a practical contribution to increased understanding of payment system design and management and of the relationship between the payment system and monetary policy. the authors of the 12 papers included in the book are central banking experts from around the world who draw on their experiences in providing technical assistance to the cental banks of the countries of the former U.S.S.R.

Japan’s weak economic performance in the 1990s has had implications not only for its own people, but for the world economy more generally, given Japan’s importance as a trading partner and supplier of capital. Therefore, it is essential that Japan unlock its growth potential. The IMF has worked with the Japanese authorities to identify the policies needed to bring Japan’s economy out of its recent slump. This book contributes to this ongoing debate, whose major topics include the need for an ...

A visionary case for a new monetary system that is interest-free, just and stableAs a medium of exchange, money is one of the most ingenious inventions of mankind, as it facilitates the trade of goods and services and allows for specialization and the division of labor. However, compound interest and inflation have caused our monetary system to balloon to the point where bailing out banks, large corporations, and even entire countries will not prevent a complete br...

This textbook offers a complete course in applied macroeconomics at the intermediate level that emphasizes the application of economic theory to real-world data and policy. Topics covered include national and international income, financial accounts, business cycles, financial markets, economic growth, labor markets, aggregate supply and demand, inflation, and monetary and fiscal policy. The text is unique in developing a detailed toolkit of elementary statistics and graphical techniques f...

This paper offers Algeria's recent experience with macroeconomic stabilization and systemic transformation from a centrally planned to a market economy. The analyses focuses on the period since 1994 when Algeria embarked on a comprehensive reform program that has benefitted from IMF support, first through a one-year Stand-by Arrangement, and from May 1995, through a three-year arrangement under the Extended Fund Facility. To better understand this experience, this paper provides some backg...