IMF World Economic Outlook reports

The Policy Center for the New South will host Romain Alexander Duval, Chief Economist at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on October 22, who will be presenting the new chapter of the IMF World economic Outlook.

Emerging market and developing economies have enjoyed good growth over the past two decades, but for many economies convergence toward living standards in advanced economies has been slow, raising the question of whether structural reforms could reignite growth. At the same time, individual countries’ experience with past reforms has also been mixed.

Against this background, this presentation of a new chapter of the October 2019 IMF World Economic Outlook will:

 i)Document reform trends for a wide range of emerging market and developing economies over the past four decades, using a newly constructed IMF database on regulations in the areas of domestic and external finance, trade, and labor and product markets;

ii) Reassess the income effects of past reforms in these areas, shedding light on the circumstances under which they worked or did not work, and quantifying the potential income gains from a renewed reform push;

iii) On this basis, discuss how policymakers in emerging market and developing economies can best design, prioritize and sequence reforms to maximize their payoffs and overcome political obstacles to their implementation.