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Press Briefing by Julie Kozack, Director, Communications Department

Watch: IMF's Communications Department Director Julie Kozack discusses key economic issues and addresses questions on Argentina, Sri Lanka, and Nigeria.

Entrepreneurship and Growth

Advisory Council formed to boost entrepreneurship and productivity through macroeconomic and financial policies.

Podcasts

Amory Gethin Measures the Economic Value of Education
March 20, 2025

Economists have long surmised that people’s knowledge and skills contribute significantly to economic development, but to what degree can access to an education change lives? Amory Gethin has compiled data from surveys from more than 150 countries to measure what economists have never measured before: the correlation between education and individual incomes. Gethin is an economist in the World Bank Development Research Group working on growth and inequality and has sought to quantify the economic value of education as it relates to global poverty reduction. In this podcast, Gethin says investing in education advances those who pursue degrees and those who don’t. Transcript

Read the article in Finance & Development magazine

Simon Johnson on Technology, Institutions and Prosperity
February 14, 2025

Countries with better institutions are more prosperous. A truism perhaps, but then why are they so hard to build and sustain? That is the question that Simon Johnson has sought to explain since the fall of communism and the basis for the research that won him the 2024 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences. Johnson, a former IMF chief economist, now a professor at MIT in the Sloan School of Management, shares the award with James Robinson and Daron Acemoglu, who’s also coauthor of his latest book Power and Progress, which challenges the assumption that technology equals progress. In this podcast, Johnson says when controlled by a select few, tech innovation can be self-serving and risk undermining the institutions that make it possible. Transcript

Elizabeth Johnson on Fixing São Paulo’s Housing Deficit
December 19, 2024

As urbanization continues to grow worldwide, affordable housing is a rare commodity in many cities. São Paulo­, South America’s biggest city, has gained over 2 million new residents in the past decade alone. Elizabeth Johnson heads Brazil research at TS Lombard and has been studying São Paulo’s latest attempt at strengthening its housing strategy. In this podcast, Johnson says the city looked to its largely abandoned downtown core to address its housing woes. Transcript

Read the article in the IMF's Finance and Development Magazine