Showing results for "jonathan d ostry"

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Jonathan D. Ostry, Prakash Loungani, Andrew Berg

Inequality has drastically increased in many countries around the globe over the past three decades. The widening gap between the very rich and everyone else is often portrayed as an unexpected outcome or as the tradeoff we must accept to achieve economic growth. In this book, three International Monetary Fund economists show that this increase in inequality has in fact been a political choice—and explain what policies we should choose instead to achieve a more inclusive economy.Jo...

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Jonathan D. Ostry, Prakash Loungani, Andrew Berg

Inequality has drastically increased in many countries around the globe over the past three decades. The widening gap between the very rich and everyone else is often portrayed as an unexpected outcome or as the tradeoff we must accept to achieve economic growth. In this book, three International Monetary Fund economists show that this increase in inequality has in fact been a political choice—and explain what policies we should choose instead to achieve a more inclusive economy.Jo...

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Jonathan David Mr. Ostry, Andrew Mr. Berg, Charalambos G. Mr. Tsangarides

The Fund has recognized in recent years that one cannot separate issues of economic growth and stability on one hand and equality on the other. Indeed, there is a strong case for considering inequality and an inability to sustain economic growth as two sides of the same coin. Central to the Funds mandate is providing advice that will enable members economies to grow on a sustained basis. But the Fund has rightly been cautious about recommending the use of redistributive policies given th...

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Jonathan Mr. Ostry, Abdul Mr. Abiad

This paper aims to put some constraints on the way primary surpluses are projected when making assessments of public debt sustainability. Projections should be tied either to the country's historical track record in generating surpluses-if the institutional and other factors accounting for this track record are expected to persist-or to some model that links primary surpluses to their fundamental determinants, either on the basis of constant institutions and policies or a credible reform prog...

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Jonathan Mr. Ostry

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Jonathan Mr. Ostry, Mahvash Saeed Qureshi, Karl Mr. Habermeier, Dennis B. S. Reinhardt, Marcos Mr. Chamon, Atish Mr. Ghosh

With the global economy beginning to emerge from the financial crisis, capital is flowing back to emerging market countries (EMEs). These flows, and capital mobility more generally, allow countries with limited savings to attract financing for productive investment projects, foster the diversification of investment risk, promote intertemporal trade, and contribute to the development of financial markets. In this sense, the benefits from a free flow of capital across borders are similar to ...

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Jonathan Mr. Ostry, Atish Mr. Ghosh, Anton Mr. Korinek

The financial crisis has again brought home the profound financial linkages across countries, often manifest in highly volatile capital flows. This volatility has prompted interest in possible rules of the road to guide policies in both source and recipient countries. This note discusses the analytical underpinnings, and possible contours, of such rules. While a series of discussion notes have investigated how an individual country might respond to surging inflows, less attention has been pai...

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Jonathan Mr. Ostry, Andrew Mr. Berg

This note raises the IMF’s profile on a number of issues related to inequality, unemployment, governance, etc. It builds on earlier empirical work that examined correlations between growth downbreaks/duration of growth spells and a range of macro/policy/institutional factors. This paper is designed to be more accessible, more policy oriented, and focused squarely on the issue of inequality and the sustainability of growth. It will reference the literature that has gained prominence in the wak...

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Jonathan Mr. Ostry, Atish Mr. Ghosh, Raphael Espinoza

What considerations should guide public debt policy going forward? Should debt be reduced to achieve normative anchors (such as 60 percent of GDP), should it be increased further to finance a big public investment push, or should the existing debt be serviced forever? We argue that, for countries with ample fiscal space (little risk of encountering a fiscal crisis), raising distortive taxes merely to bring the debt down is a treatment cure that is worse than the disease. High public debt of c...

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Jonathan David Ostry, Jun I. Kim

Can debt management policy provide a way to increase fiscal space for a given path of primary fiscal balances? This note explores the role of two such policies: issuance of state-contingent debt; and issuance of longer maturity debt. New analytical models determine the debt limit and the default risk under uncertainty, and undertake numerical simulations to gauge the practical significance of the effect of debt management policies on fiscal space. The results suggest that, by managing debt...

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Jonathan David Ostry, Jorge Alvarez, Raphael A Espinoza, Chris Papageorgiou

While progress has been made in increasing female labor force participation (FLFP) in the last 20 years, large gaps remain. The latest Fund research shows that improving gender diversity can result in larger economic gains than previously thought. Indeed, gender diversity brings benefits all its own. Women bring new skills to the workplace. This may reflect social norms and their impact on upbringing and social interactions, or underlying differences in risk preference and response to ince...

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Gabriele Ciminelli, Davide Furceri, Jun Ge, Jonathan David Ostry, Chris Papageorgiou

Many countries are experiencing persistent, weak medium-term growth and limited fiscal space. Against this background, economic policy agendas—in both advanced and developing economies—are focusing increasingly on structural reforms. While there is broad agreement on the economic benefits of structural reforms, the political-economy of reform is less settled. This is because reforms may generate gains only in the longer term while distributional effects may be sizable in the short run, and...