IMF Conference

 CALL FOR PAPERS

The Banco de la República, the Latin American Reserve Fund (FLAR), the International Monetary Fund, and the IMF Economic Review are inviting paper submissions for their joint conference on “From Micro to Macro: Leveraging Microdata to Address Macroeconomic Issues” to be held in person in Bogotá, Colombia, on August 5-6, 2025.

The conference will focus on the use of microdata to answer macroeconomic questions and guide policymakers. Over the past decade, there have been significant shifts not only in demand for data but also data availability and granularity, driven by both private and public sectors. The increasing wealth of available data provides valuable opportunities to better inform policymaking. This conference aims to showcase an outstanding set of academic contributions that use microdata to tackle macroeconomic issues, directly by drawing from micro level evidence or employing models calibrated and tested with microdata. Microdata is broadly defined and includes, but is not limited to, administrative data (credit registry, tax, social security, etc.), survey data, and expectations data.

The organizers invite both empirical and theoretical research contributions on a broad set of issues relevant to emerging and developing economies. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

• The effects of credit supply shocks and the transmission of monetary policy;
• Inflation, exchange rate passthrough, and the effects of external shocks;
• Business dynamism, productivity, innovation, and technology diffusion;
• Structural transformation, the green energy transition, and artificial intelligence;
• Human capital, aging, and labor market dynamics;
• Wage inequality within and across countries;
• Studies using cross-country microdata; and
• Meta studies on the availability of and best practices by policymakers on the use of microdata.

Please send submissions in Adobe PDF format to: IMFERSummerconf@imf.org. Selected papers will be considered for publication in a special issue of the IMF Economic Review. Along with your submission, please indicate whether you are interested in contributing to this issue. Papers that are not being submitted to the Review are also welcome.

Deadline for submissions is February 15, 2025. Authors of accepted papers will be notified by March 15. Preference will be given to finished papers. The conference sponsors will fund travel and accommodation expenses for speakers (one per paper) and discussants.

Organizing Committee:

Emine Boz (IMF and Co-Editor, IMF Economic Review)
Juan Esteban Carranza Romero (Head Officer for Economic Studies, Banco de la República)
Javier Cravino (University of Michigan and Guest Editor, IMF Economic Review)
Gabriela Cugat (IMF)
Carlos Giraldo (Chief Economist, Latin American Reserve Fund, FLAR)
Andrei Levchenko (University of Michigan and Editor, IMF Economic Review)
Veronica Rappoport (London School of Economics and Guest Editor, IMF Economic Review)

IMF Conference Coordinators:

Tracey Lookadoo and Julia Grisard