By Tim Hirschel-Burns In late June, the Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development (FfD4) will take place in Seville, Spain. Despite challenging geopolitical circumstances, the conference – which is the first in 10 years and almost certainly the last FfD before the critical 2030 milestone – will still play a key normative role as […]
By Tim Hirschel-Burns 2025 admittedly presents a dubious landscape for achieving substantive global economic governance reforms. The scale of needs is large—achieving development and climate goals demands trillions more in annual financing and a reorientation of our economic system—while our political context is trending in the wrong direction, with countries cutting international investments and geopolitical […]
The most notable milestone of 2024 was the 80th anniversary of the Bretton Woods institutions of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank and World Trade Organization. This anniversary came as calls for ambitious global economic governance reforms gain momentum in key fora, and developing country frustrations with the existing system continue to grow. 2024 […]
While the macroeconomic significance of climate change has been understood in academic scholarship for a long time, policy engagement on this topic is rather new. While initiatives such as the Network for Greening the Financial System and the Coalition of Finance Ministers for Climate Change have emerged, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) – the only […]
By Praveena Bandara On November 7, 2024, the Boston University Global Development Policy Center (GDP Center) hosted Marina Zucker-Marques, Senior Academic Researcher at the GDP Center, and Juan Pablo Bohoslavsky, Researcher at the National Scientific and Technical Research Council of Argentina (CONICET), to discuss their new book, “Feminism in Public Debt: A Human Rights Approach,” as part of […]
By Marina Zucker-Marques In the evolving landscape of international finance, the internationalization of China’s currency, the renminbi, has become a focal point of discussion. While this doesn’t suggest that the renminbi is on track to replace the US dollar, its growing influence on the international stage does represent China’s strategy to reduce its dependence on […]
What role do central banks play in designing cross-border payment infrastructure as part of a broader agenda of currency internationalization? In a new journal article published in Research in International Business and Finance, Marina Zucker-Marques focuses on China’s experience from 2008 to 2023 to trace the evolution of the renminbi’s cross-border payment network, contrasting these […]
By Tim Hirschel-Burns The 29th United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP29), taking place from November 11-29, 2024 in Baku, Azerbaijan, has been dubbed the “Finance COP” and is expected to deliver a new climate finance goal, known in COP jargon as the New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG). This NCQG will succeed the climate finance goal […]
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) holds 90.5 million ounces of gold on its balance sheet, a legacy from its founding in 1944, when member countries paid their quotas in gold. This idle gold is sitting on the IMF’s balance sheet at a historical cost of $45 per ounce, compared to $2,600 per ounce on global […]
By Samantha Igo On Tuesday, October 22, 2024, the Boston University Global Development Policy Center and Global Economy and Development at the Brookings Institution co-hosted a high-level panel alongside the 2024 International Monetary Fund (IMF)/World Bank Group Annual Meetings in Washington, D.C. on Global South perspectives for international financial architecture reform. The event featured a […]