F&D Magazine

F&D Magazine / Economic growth

Xavier Jaravel on Democratizing Innovation to Spur Growth

XAVIER JARAVEL April 1, 2025

Most of today’s innovators emerge from a narrow demographic group with specific backgrounds, which Xavier Jaravel says creates the phenomena of “Lost Einsteins” and “Lost Marie Curies". Jaravel is a professor of economics at the London School of Economics. In this podcast, he talks about the benefits of unleashing untapped talent and broadening the pool of innovators worldwide.

F&D Magazine / Education

Amory Gethin Measures the Economic Value of Education

AMORY GETHIN 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 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.

F&D Magazine / Economic growth

Karthik Sastry on Animal Spirits and the Economy

KARTHIK SASTRY March 12, 2025

While we like to think our financial decisions are based on logic, the truth is, they are largely driven by emotion. So when John Maynard Keynes looked for methods to measure economic fluctuations, animal spirits were a key ingredient. Karthik Sastry is a macroeconomist and assistant professor at Princeton University. In this podcast, he says personal instincts and primal urges are known to cause cycles of boom and bust, and one way to gauge those emotions is through economic narratives.

Oren Cass on the Invisible Hand

OREN CASS March 3, 2025

Modern economics was built on ideas spelled out by Adam Smith in his 18th-century The Wealth of Nations. But while he used the term only once in that voluminous economic treatise, Smith is most remembered for “the invisible hand,” a metaphor that Oren Cass says has wrongly been associated with the idea that markets magically self-correct. Cass is the founder and chief economist at American Compass. In this podcast, he says the contortion of Smith’s idea led to a blind faith in markets, whereas “the invisible hand” was really about ensuring the alignment between private profit and the public interest.

Sanjeev Gupta on Health Financing

SANJEEV GUPTA February 25, 2025

The pandemic was a brutal reminder of how crucial public health systems are, yet health budgets in developing economies are still underfunded. In this podcast, Center for Global Development fellow Sanjeev Gupta says greater revenue collection and improved budget execution would strengthen health systems and reduce the need for foreign assistance.

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IMF Podcasts are the views of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) staff and external officials on pressing economic and policy issues of the day. The IMF, based in Washington D.C., is an organization of 191 countries, working to foster global monetary cooperation and financial stability around the world. The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the views of the IMF and its Executive Board.

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