Gallagher Publishes Article on Monetary Support During COVID-19

Kevin Gallagher, Professor of Global Development Policy and Director of the Global Development Policy Center at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, co-authored an article in De Gruyter on the need for emergency financing in developing countries. 

Gallagher and co-authors José Antonio Ocampo, Professor of Professional Practice in International and Public Affairs at Columbia University, and Ulrich Volz, Reader in Economics at SOAS University of London and Founding Director of the SOAS Centre for Sustainable Finance, describe how the current Global Financial Safety Net (GFSN) and International Monetary Fund (IMF) emergency financial measure will not be enough to support its membership through ongoing economic crisis.

In the article, the three scholars discuss how COVID-19 has disproportionately effected developing countries and explain that new measures need to be put in place to maintain global economic health. Gallagher, Ocampo, and Volz outline a number of measures that could be taken by the global financial community to mitigate some of the economic damages dealt by the coronavirus pandemic. Chief among their recommendations is the allocation of Special Drawing Rights (SDR) – supplementary foreign exchange reserve assets maintained by the IMF. 

An excerpt:

COVID-19 does not discriminate between rich and poor countries, and until the virus is eradicated it will imperil the health of the world’s people and the global economy alike. The international community needs to extend support so that public responses to the health crisis are not imperilled by financial crises…An SDR allocation is not a silver bullet, and it needs to be complemented by further measures.

The full article can be read here.

Kevin Gallagher is a professor of global development policy at Boston University’s Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies, where he directs the Global Development Policy Center. He is author or co-author of six books, including most recently, The China Triangle: Latin America’s China Boom and the Fate of the Washington Consensus. Read more about him here.

Reposted from the Pardee School of Global Studies.