White Papers
IMF Working Paper-Making Stablecoins Stable
April 10, 2026-Summary
Payment stablecoins are privately issued digital money with the potential to enhance payment efficiency- foster innovation- and improve financial inclusion. At the same time- they are vulnerable to runs and associated welfare losses. One way to lower run risk is to require stablecoin issuers to hold safe assets. But doing so may lower issuers' profitability and thus their incentive to provide stablecoins- hampering payment innovation and product variety.
This paper offers a theoretical framework to navigate the tradeoff between maintaining stability and incentivizing issuance.
Based on the Diamond and Dybvig (1983) model of bank runs- the paper shows that an unregulated private equilibrium is suboptimal. Stablecoin issuers hold risky assets to maximize profits- increasing run risk. A social planner can improve the equilibrium by requiring the backing of stablecoins with a safe asset (such as central bank reserves in a narrow bank setting)- and creating conditions for other sources of revenue for issuers (such as central bank reserves remuneration or policies for payment data utilization). The model offers a baseline for the ongoing policy discussion while identifying considerations for further study.
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Source: imf.org
IMF-Understanding Global Imbalances
April 6, 2026-Summary
Against the backdrop of persistent and recently widening global imbalances, the paper presents a structured framework for understanding how domestic policies can influence current account positions by altering domestic saving and investment decisions. Staff analysis finds that traditional macroeconomic policies remain the dominant drivers of imbalances, but certain types of industrial policies could also play a role.
Micro industrial policies-those targeting specific sectors or firms-generally have ambiguous and limited effects on the current account depending on their impact on aggregate productivity. Macro industrial policies-those deployed economy-wide and often paired with restrictions such as capital flow management measures-can materially affect the current account but come at a cost to consumption. Trade restrictions, often deployed to counter imbalances, would only meaningfully alter current account balances when used temporarily or to support higher public savings.
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Source: imf.org
50 Investible Opportunities for a New Nature Economy
March 17, 2026-While businesses are feeling the adverse impacts of nature loss, they are also beginning to recognise the opportunities a nature-positive economy can offer. From precision agriculture to battery recycling to bio-based materials, new ways of doing business are delivering both long-term resilience and short-term gains.
Financial institutions are also realising the green economy can compete on returns.
This report highlights 50+ investible opportunities already generating cost-savings or revenues for businesses across the real economy.
Corporate and finance leaders are transforming their operations because it makes good business sense to do so. In 2024, the green economy accounted for ˜$8 trillion in listed equity market value and has outperformed global equities by ˜59% since 2008. Yet the private sector still invests ˜$5 trillion annually in activities that harm nature, despite research showing more than half global GDP depends on the services nature provides.
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Source: World Economic Forum (WEF)
IMF Working Paper-Stablecoin Shocks
March 6, 2026-Summary
We develop novel measures of stablecoin shocks and use them to identify the causal effects of stablecoin adoption on U.S. financial markets. Combining a daily narrative dataset of stablecoin-specific news with changes in the combined market capitalization of USDC and USDT, we measure high-frequency movements in stablecoin market capitalization and implement heteroskedasticity-based identification within an event-study and SVAR-IV framework.
Stablecoin demand shocks have triggered persistent declines in short-term Treasury yields, a depreciation of the U.S. dollar, and gradual spillovers into crypto and equity markets. We also document heterogeneous effects across firms: payment providers benefit from greater stablecoin adoption, whereas banks-including community and small banks-show no evidence of priced disintermediation risk. Our findings highlight stablecoin demand as a novel channel of asset-market transmission.
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Source: imf.org
OECD-Financial Protection Against Catastrophic Risks
March 5, 2026-Floods, Fires and Other Major Risks
Introduction
Natural hazards, cyber attacks and infectious disease outbreaks can lead to devastating financial consequences that many individuals, households or businesses would struggle to absorb. Insurance can provide a critical source of funding to absorb losses and support recovery.
However, evolving weather and environmental risks, fast-moving technological changes and other factors are testing the ability of private insurance markets to achieve broad financial protection against these risks.
This report aims to help governments strengthen financial resilience against catastrophic risks. It provides a framework to assess the need for government-supported financial protection and examines approaches to supporting insurance coverage for wildfires and floods in particular-as two important and growing risks in many countries.
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Source: OECD
IMF Working Paper-Population Aging and Pension Reforms in China
February 20, 2026--China is experiencing rapid population aging and a declining workforce, posing significant economic and fiscal challenges, especially to the pension system. This paper examines the evolution of China's pension system, assesses its gaps relative to international peers, and evaluates the macro-fiscal implications of population aging and various pension reforms.
Using a calibrated overlapping generations model that explicitly incorporates the rural-urban disparities, we project that population aging alone can slow annual GDP growth by about 2 percentage points between 2024 and 2050, while pension spending can rise by nearly 10 percentage points of GDP. The 2024 retirement age reform eases some of the long-term growth and fiscal sustainability pressures, raising GDP growth by 0.2 percentage points annually and reducing pension spending from 15.3 percent to 11.9 percent of GDP by 2050. We also use the model to examine a set of policy-relevant reforms-doubling Residents Pension Scheme benefits which are currently inadequate, linking benefits to life expectancy, further increasing the retirement age, and promoting urbanization-and find significant effects on fiscal and macroeconomic outcomes.
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Source: imf.org
IMF Working Paper-Optimal Exchange Rate Policy with Oil Shocks
February 20, 2026--Summary
We study optimal monetary and exchange rate policy in a small open economy facing oil price shocks. In a model with segmented financial markets that generate endogenous UIP deviations, the first-best allocation is achieved through a combination of interest rate policy and foreign exchange intervention (FXI). Monetary policy stabilizes domestic inflation and the output gap, while FXI targets the UIP wedge to offset financial frictions.
Oil price shocks endogenously move the net foreign asset position, giving rise to financial imbalances that make FXI essential-a mechanism distinct from exogenous financial shocks highlighted in the literature. Quantitatively, for a calibrated oil exporter, suboptimal regimes such as a free float or a simple peg entail sizable welfare losses of around 2% in consumption-equivalent terms, though peg, and especially peg with fuel subsidies, can outperform free floats. Overall, FXI is crucial to break the destabilizing link between real commodity shocks and financial risk premia.
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Source: imf.org
IMF Staff Country Report-Australia: Selected Issues
February 15, 2026--The re-elected government has laid out a bold reform agenda since taking office in May. Following a period of high inflation, the convergence of the economy toward balance is creating the opportunity to focus on ambitious structural reforms to address medium-term challenges.
Delivering on the government's three main economic goals of boosting productivity, maintaining fiscal sustainability and ensuring economic resilience will help strengthen Australia's economy amid an uncertain global outlook.
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Source: imf.org
From Ports to Prices: The Inflationary Effects of Global Supply Chain Disruptions
February 13, 2026--Summary
This paper examines the inflationary effects of shipping delays. We construct a novel measure of port-to-port shipping time using real-time AIS maritime data and link it with granular port-level trade and item-level price data. We document substantial heterogeneity in goods imports across ports and regions, variation in exposure to delays, and aggregate price responses to congestion shocks.
Exploiting cross-product variations in exposure, we estimate both the average and dynamic effects of shipping delays on consumer prices, finding that a 100-hour delay raises inflation by roughly 0.5 percentage points at its five-month peak.
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Source: imf.org
New SIX White Paper: Swiss Versus US Listings
February 4, 2026-Switzerland is uniquely positioned as a listing destination, yet tech companies sometimes gravitate in their listing considerations toward the US in pursuit of higher valuations and broader perceived advantages such as investor access, liquidity, and research coverage.
To separate fact from fiction around these factors, SIX has published a new edition of the white paper ‘Evaluating the Aspects of a Swiss versus a US Listing’. The findings reveal that Switzerland's IPO credentials stack up strongly against the US.
Access to US investors does not require a US listing. A listing on SIX Swiss Exchange enables issuers to target US institutional buyers via a Rule 144A offering, which allows securities to be sold to qualified institutional buyers without needing to register with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. At the same time, Switzerland has one of Europe's largest pools of investor capital -valued at USD 207 billion- which is second only in size to the UK.
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Source: six-group.com
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