‘Spending imperatives from pandemic and war meet high debt and tight budget constraints.’
Just as increasing vaccinations offered hope, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine disrupted the global economic recovery. One of the most visible global effects has been the acceleration of energy and food prices, triggering concerns about episodes of food shortages and increasing the risks of malnutrition and social unrest. World food prices surged by 33.6 percent in March from a year earlier, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.
Our latest Fiscal Monitor discusses how governments, faced with record debt and rising borrowing costs, can best respond to the urgent needs. It stresses the call for greater global cooperation.
Highly uncertain fiscal outlook
Economies around the world have accumulated layer upon layer of legacies from past shocks since the global financial crisis. Extraordinary fiscal actions in response to the pandemic led to a surge in fiscal deficits and public debt in 2020.
Moreover, the outlook remained uncertain as the world navigated an unprecedented environment, with rising inflation and increasing divergence in recoveries—and then Russia invaded Ukraine, pushing geopolitical risks sharply up.
Global deficits and debt are falling from record levels, but the risks around the outlook are exceptionally high and vulnerabilities are rising. Global public debt is expected to fall in 2022 and then stabilize at about 95 percent of gross domestic product over the medium term, 11 percentage points higher than before the pandemic. Large inflation surprises in 2020-21 helped reduce debt ratios, but as monetary policy tightens to curb inflation, sovereign borrowing costs will rise, narrowing the scope for government spending and increasing debt vulnerabilities.
In advanced economies, deficits are projected to decline and policies are shifting from pandemic support to structural transformation. Fiscal outlooks in Europe face exceptional uncertainty given the war in Ukraine and its spillovers. In most emerging markets, deficits will narrow, but with large variations across countries. Low-income countries, already suffering with scarring from the pandemic, have very limited fiscal space as they are hard hit by spillovers from the war.
The different shocks have also brought new risks to public finances. Governments are under pressure to deal with the rising energy and food prices. To alleviate the burden on households, ensure food security, and preempt social unrest, most governments have announced measures to limit the rise in domestic prices. However, such actions could have large fiscal costs and exacerbate global demand and supply mismatches, putting further pressure on international prices and possibly leading to energy or food shortages. This would further hurt low-income countries that rely on imported energy and food.
Moreover, the fight against poverty has suffered a setback, especially in emerging markets and low-income countries. Relative to pre-pandemic trends, the COVID-19 crisis pushed 70 million more people worldwide into extreme poverty in 2021. In many advanced economies, households were protected by direct government support or job-retention schemes. Households spent less and saved more because of social distancing, mobility restrictions, and uncertainty about the future. These excess savings are an important buffer but, if spent quickly, they could further add to the inflation momentum. The situation is much more dire in other countries with large numbers of poor people—where rising inflation could push more into poverty and exacerbate the food crisis.
Managing crisis upon crisis
Governments face difficult choices in this highly uncertain environment. They should focus on the most urgent spending needs and raise revenue to pay for them.
We recommend agile fiscal strategies tailored to individual country circumstances:

In the economies hardest hit by the war in Ukraine and sanctions on Russia, fiscal policy needs to respond to the humanitarian crisis and economic disruptions. Given rising inflation and interest rates, fiscal support should be targeted to those most affected and priority areas.
In nations where growth is stronger and inflation pressures remain elevated, fiscal policy should continue its shift from support to normalization.
In many emerging markets and low-income economies facing tight financing conditions or the risk of debt distress, governments will need to prioritize spending and raise revenues to reduce vulnerabilities.
Commodity exporters that benefit from higher prices should seize the opportunity to rebuild buffers.

Government responses to the surge in international commodity prices should give priority to protecting the most vulnerable. A critical objective is to avoid a food crisis while keeping social cohesion. Countries with well-developed social safety nets could deploy targeted and temporary cash transfers to vulnerable groups while allowing domestic prices to adjust. This will limit budgetary pressures and create the right incentives to increase supply (such as investing in renewable energy). Other countries could allow a more gradual adjustment of domestic prices and use existing tools to help the most vulnerable during this crisis, while taking steps to strengthen safety nets.
Fossil-fuel price hikes further highlight the urgency in accelerating the transition to clean and renewable energy, which would increase energy security and help meet the urgent climate agenda—we are dramatically off-track to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius.
About 60 percent of low-income countries are either at high risk of debt distress or already experiencing it. They face persistent scarring from COVID-19. They are especially vulnerable to food price rises, given the large share of food spending in their households’ budgets. These countries need support from the international community.
But the need for collective action is broader. Global cooperation is necessary to tackle pressing and urgent problems that the world is facing: energy and food crises, current and future pandemics, debt, development, and climate change.
Authors:

Jean-Marc Fournier
Vitor Gaspar
Paulo Medas
Roberto Accioly Perrelli

Compliments of the IMF.
The post IMF | Governments Need Agile Fiscal Policies as Food and Fuel Prices Spike first appeared on European American Chamber of Commerce New York [EACCNY] | Your Partner for Transatlantic Business Resources.

‘A record rise in private debt could slow the economic recovery, but the drag on growth will vary across countries and within them.’
Governments succeeded in lessening the economic pain of the pandemic by providing plenty of liquidity to stricken consumers and businesses through credit guarantees, concessional lending and moratoriums on interest payments.
But although these policies proved effective in supporting balance sheets, they also led to a spike in private debt, extending a steady increase in leverage spurred by supportive financial conditions since the global financial crisis of 2008.
Global private debt surged by 13 percent of the world’s gross domestic product in 2020—faster than the rise seen during the global financial crisis and almost as fast as public debt.
We estimate that recent levels of leverage could slow economic recovery by a cumulative 0.9 percent of GDP in advanced economies and 1.3 percent in emerging markets on average over the next three years.
Greater debt drag
Aggregate figures do not tell the whole story, however. The impact of the pandemic on the finances of households and firms has varied across countries and within them, reflecting differences in their policy responses and the sectoral composition of their economies.
For example, contact-intensive services such as entertainment contracted as people stayed at home, but production and exports of computers, software and other goods expanded as consumers spent more on appliances. The impact on consumer and business balance sheets, especially those most exposed to the pandemic, differed greatly depending on the support provided by governments.
Our analysis shows that the post-pandemic drag on growth could be much larger in countries where (1) indebtedness is more concentrated among financially stretched households and vulnerable firms, (2) fiscal space is limited, (3) the insolvency regime is inefficient, and (4) monetary policy needs to be tightened rapidly.
Low-income households and vulnerable firms (highly indebted and unprofitable businesses that are struggling to make interest payments) are typically less able to withstand a high level of debt. As a result, they are likely to make sharper cuts to consumption and investment spending in the future. The drag on future growth is therefore expected to be greatest in countries that experienced the largest increases in indebtedness among low-income households and vulnerable firms during the pandemic.
Consumers in China and South Africa saw the largest increases in household debt ratios among the countries for which detailed data are available. But the experience of households in these two countries was very different: in China leverage increased the most among lower-income households whereas households with higher incomes accounted for most of the increase in South Africa.
Among advanced economies, low-income households in the United States, Germany, and the United Kingdom saw comparatively larger increases in debt than those in France and Italy, where leverage actually declined for poorer households.
The impact of the pandemic on businesses varied, too. Vulnerable firms—highly concentrated in contact-intensive services—often borrowed to survive the drop in revenues caused by the pandemic. Future investment is therefore likely to be lower in countries with a higher share of contact-intensive sectors.
Rising inflation and interest rates
As economies recover and inflation accelerates, governments should take account of the impact of fiscal and monetary policy tightening on the most financially stretched consumers and businesses when pacing the exit from extraordinary support policies.
For example, we estimate that a surprise tightening of 100 basis points would slow investment by the most leveraged firms by a cumulative 6.5 percentage points over two years—four percentage points more than for the least leveraged.
Where the recovery is well underway and balance sheets are in good shape, fiscal support could be reduced faster, facilitating the work of central banks. Elsewhere, governments should target fiscal support to the most vulnerable in the transition to recovery while keeping within credible medium-term fiscal frameworks.
To prevent rapid tightening of monetary policy from causing large and potentially long-lasting disruptions, policymakers should pay close attention to adverse developments in the financial sector.
This is especially important in countries where a wave of bankruptcies in sectors heavily hit by the pandemic could spill over to the rest of the economy. Governments in these countries could incentivize restructuring over liquidation and, where necessary, extend solvency support.
Insolvency, restructuring regimes
Authorities should also enhance restructuring and insolvency mechanisms (through dedicated out-of-court restructuring, for instance) to promote a rapid reallocation of capital and labor toward the most productive firms.
Similarly, if large household debts threaten recovery, governments should consider cost-effective debt restructuring programs aimed at transferring resources to relatively vulnerable individuals who are more likely to spend their income. These programs should, by their design, seek to minimize moral hazard.
In short, the recent surge in indebtedness of households and firms poses risks to the pace of recovery. Yet this risk is not equally distributed. Careful, real-time monitoring of the balance sheets of low-income households and vulnerable firms is key to calibrating the unwinding of support measures. This could prevent sudden distress when financial conditions tighten.
Authors:

Silvia Albrizio
Sonali Das
Christoffer Koch
Jean-Marc Natal
Philippe Wingender

—This blog, based on Analytical Chapter 2 of the April 2022 World Economic Outlook, “Private Sector Debt and the Global Recovery,” also reflects support from Evgenia Pugacheva and Yarou Xu.
The post IMF | Private Debt to Weigh on Global Economic Recovery first appeared on European American Chamber of Commerce New York [EACCNY] | Your Partner for Transatlantic Business Resources.

Cooperation across countries can raise revenue, tackle inequality, and fight climate change.
Technology, globalization, and global warming have changed the world, and taxation must keep pace. With a mouse click, individuals can move money across borders and corporations can transact with their affiliates across global supply chains. Production depends on intangible know-how assets that can be located anywhere. Employers and their employees can work in different countries. As income and factors of production become more mobile, and with climate change threatening our planet, countries face tax challenges that know no national borders.
Tax evasion and avoidance cause the loss of revenue that could have financed social spending or infrastructure investments. They also exacerbate inequality and perceptions of unfairness. Self-serving national policies of one country can affect others in damaging ways. If each sets its own tax policy without regard for the adverse effects elsewhere, all countries can end up worse off.
Our new Fiscal Monitor shows how better international coordination in three areas—taxing large corporations, sharing information on offshore holdings, and enacting fair carbon pricing—can benefit everyone.
Coordinating on corporate taxation
Widespread dissatisfaction with low tax payments by the world’s major multinationals (despite annual profits of 9 percent of global gross domestic product) spurred a groundbreaking agreement to modernize the existing and century-old international system. In 2021, 137 countries reached a breakthrough on coordination: the Two Pillars Solution under the Inclusive Framework. With 2022 set to be a crucial year for implementing the agreement—the object of live political debate in several countries—the Fiscal Monitor gauges its potential benefits.
Pillar 1 of the agreement says that a portion of multinationals’ profits must be taxed where the firms’ goods or services are used or consumed. This means that tech companies can be taxed where their customers are located, even if their employees are far from their customer base. In a world where digital commerce is now commonplace, this is a welcome development. While our report finds that the agreed reallocation of tax revenue covers only 2 percent of global profit of multinationals, this new taxation principle sets the stage for a more efficient tax than unilateral digital services taxes.
Pillar 2 establishes a global minimum corporate tax of 15 percent. By doing so, it puts a floor on competition, reducing incentives for countries to compete using their tax rates and for firms to shift profits across borders. Some nations will top up their tax on “undertaxed” profit to the minimum level, increasing corporate tax revenues by up to 6 percent globally. By reversing the downward trend of income corporate income tax rates, reduced tax competition could raise revenue by another 8 percent, bringing the total effect to 14 percent. Work should continue, however, to better adapt to low-income countries’ circumstances—for example, to simplify some aspects of corporate taxation, strengthen withholding taxes on cross-border payments, and share more country-by-country information on multinationals. For low-income economies to reap the benefits of recent changes, they need to adopt complementary reforms, such as removing wasteful tax incentives.
Coordinating on personal taxation
Much like corporations, the taxation of individuals (especially the wealthiest) also requires coordination across borders. Recent leaks of documents such as the Panama Papers and Paradise Papers revealed a massive stock of offshore wealth and widespread tax loopholes. And with the rise of digital assets that allow for even greater anonymity, the sharing of information is becoming more and more vital. Beyond the revenue loss, opaque offshore accounts designed to hide wealth facilitate the transnational transfer of corrupt proceeds.
Coordination can deliver tangible results, and 163 countries have agreed to exchange information under the Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information for Tax Purposes. Yet, more can be done to improve the reliability of the information, our report notes. Countries should do more to promote beneficial ownership registries—information about who really owns or controls a company.
Some countries have already established such mechanisms. But how they are implemented matters—information from the registries should be centralized in a public database. Effective use of the information remains critical for enforcement and low-income countries will need to develop more know-how to realize the benefits from transparency.
Another recent phenomenon that calls for greater coordination is the increasing mobility of the labor force. Opportunities for cross-border remote work have expanded, along with the number of economies offering digital-nomad visas targeted at high-skilled individuals. Estimates suggest that cross-border remote work—given existing differences in tax rates across countries—reallocates personal income tax revenue between countries by 1.25 percent of global personal income tax revenue. Coordination will gain importance in the future to ensure a consistent tax treatment between countries where employers and employees reside.
Coordinating on carbon pricing
Concrete coordinated action is even more urgent to fight climate change, because the rapid increase in greenhouse gas emissions is causing us to speed toward disastrous global warming of more than double the limit that scientists consider tolerably safe.
An international carbon price floor is analogous to a global minimum corporate tax. But here a few key emitting countries can speed up coordination and make an important start. Such a floor would discourage emissions and alleviate competitiveness concerns. It would limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius or less while accommodating alternative approaches (such as regulation, through the calculation of equivalent prices). An international carbon price floor could also allow differentiated responsibilities for nations depending on the income level.
As governments grapple with an acceleration of energy prices caused by the war in Ukraine, they should support people (ideally through targeted transfers or lump-sum utility bill discounts) rather than subsidizing fossil fuel consumption. And near-term responses should not detract from efforts to invest in renewable energy and greater energy efficiency. Countries that have already set a gradual rising path for carbon taxation should stay the course—the envisaged increases are far smaller than recent gyrations in prices, which stem from global shocks. Revenues should be used to ensure that all workers and communities benefit from the green transition. At the international level, agreeing on a carbon price floor (or equivalent measures) remains urgent.
History tells us that the value of collaboration is even greater as we counteract the economic consequences of pandemics or conflicts. In the same cooperative spirit of scientists working together across borders to fight COVID-19, now is the time to better tax corporations, fight tax evasion, and act for a greener and fairer world.
Authors:

Vitor Gaspar
Shafik Hebous
Paolo Mauro

Compliments of the IMF.
The post IMF | Tax Coordination Can Lead to a Fairer, Greener Global Economy first appeared on European American Chamber of Commerce New York [EACCNY] | Your Partner for Transatlantic Business Resources.

Measures include job training, tax credits for lower-income workers, green infrastructure and R&D investment push, and a carbon tax.
Consensus on the need to build a greener economy often founders on concern over potential job losses. It’s one thing to agree that a transition away from fossil fuels is needed. But how easily can a coal miner, say, shift to a job installing solar panels?
The answer shouldn’t be a surprise: for some workers, the change will be difficult. But there is good news. With the right mix of policies, countries should be able to achieve net-zero greenhouse-gas emissions by 2050—while easing the pain for workers in more emissions-intensive industries such as utilities. These policies include job-training programs and investment in green technologies, according to our recent analysis in Chapter 3 of the IMF’s World Economic Outlook.
Achieving emissions objective
Limiting the average global temperature increase to well below 2 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial levels, an objective endorsed by policy makers in the 2015 Paris Agreement, will require a dramatic reduction in net emissions of greenhouse gases. This green transformation will also entail a transformation of the labor market, with jobs moving between occupations and sectors. But the overall magnitude of that shift won’t necessarily be as dramatic as it might seem.
For advanced economies, a policy package designed to put the economy on a path for net zero emissions by 2050 would shift about 1 percent of employment from higher to lower-emissions work over the next decade, our analysis shows. The shift is bigger for emerging markets at about 2.5 percent. Still, those figures are smaller than the shift from manufacturing to services in advanced economies since the mid-1980s. That has come to almost 4 percent of jobs each decade.
As our analysis shows, part of the reason why the employment shifts in advanced economies could be modest is that a minority of jobs are either green-intensive, meaning they improve environmental sustainability (like electrotechnology engineers), or pollution-intensive, meaning they are particularly predominant in highly polluting sectors (like paper mill operators). Most jobs are neutral—neither green- nor pollution-intensive.
Higher wages on greener jobs could also help ease the transition. In our analysis of advanced economies, we find that the average green-intensive job earns about 7 percent more than the average pollution-intensive job, even when skills, gender, and age profiles are controlled for. This is good news, as the premium could attract workers to greener jobs.
Policies to ease adjustment
Nevertheless, workers may still face significant challenges during the transition. Indeed, the data suggest that it is tough to become greener. Our analysis estimates that the probability of an individual moving from a pollution-intensive to a green-intensive job is between 4 percent and 7 percent.
The odds are slightly better for someone moving from neutral to green—9 percent to 11 percent. In contrast, the chance of finding a green-intensive job, if your last job was also green, is much higher at around 41 percent to 54 percent. This doesn’t mean that workers in pollution-intensive jobs have no chance of finding greener employment, but they may need some help.

This explains why it is so important to craft labor-market policies that can help shift the balance toward greener jobs and ease the transition for workers. That means boosting workers’ ability to find greener jobs—through offering training programs—and reducing the incentives to stay in more pollution-intensive occupations. This includes gradually rolling back the job retention support introduced early in the pandemic as the recovery takes hold, since such policies can weaken incentives to change jobs.
Which brings us back to the policy package that, our model-based analysis suggests, can help economies achieve net zero emissions by 2050. It has four elements:

An initial green infrastructure and R&D investment push starting in 2023, with spending gradually reduced after 2028. This would support a modest productivity increase in less emissions-intensive sectors.
A tax on carbon emissions rising gradually from 2023, with a sharper increase from 2029 onwards. This raises the relative price of more emissions-intensive goods and spurs growth in less emissions-intensive sectors.
A training program to help less-skilled workers move to greener sectors, starting in 2023. The training would help address distributional concerns by increasing the productivity of lower-skilled workers in low-emissions sectors, encouraging firms to hire them and raise their wages.
An earned-income tax credit (EITC), which reduces taxes owed by lower-income workers. This would start in 2029 and offset the impact of the carbon tax on those workers. It would also encourage more people to enter the workforce.

For the representative advanced economy, we estimate that the policy package generates a labor reallocation to greener industries of about 1 percent over 10 years. It also increases total employment by 0.5 percent and boosts after-tax income for lower-skilled workers, reducing inequality.
Emerging markets
The impact would be somewhat different for emerging-market economies, where a higher proportion of workers are employed in sectors such as mining. It would generate a shift of 2.5 percent of the workforce over 10 years. There would be an overall increase in employment in the near term as green investments kick in, but that would change to a 0.5 percent decline by 2032.
Also, emerging economies generally have more employment in so-called informal sectors, where income taxes aren’t always paid. Therefore, the package would have to be supplemented by direct cash transfers to low-income workers starting in 2029, alongside the EITC and the carbon tax.
Policy actions are essential to provide incentives for the transition to a net-zero economy by 2050. Correctly timed and implemented, these actions can ease the switch to greener jobs for a relatively modest segment of the workforce while also boosting skills and incomes for the lowest paid workers and reducing inequality. This will ensure that the path towards a greener economy is also an inclusive one.
Authors:

John Bluedorn
Niels-Jakob Hansen

—This blog, based on Chapter 3 of the World Economic Outlook, “A Greener Labor Market: Employment, Policies, and Economic Transformation,” also reflects research by Diaa Noureldin, Ippei Shibata, and Marina M. Tavares.
Compliments of the IMF.
The post IMF | The Right Labor Market Policies Can Ease the Green Jobs Transition first appeared on European American Chamber of Commerce New York [EACCNY] | Your Partner for Transatlantic Business Resources.

Countries with trade partners that implemented more stringent lockdowns had a sharper drop in imports. Though trade flows have adjusted, more diversified global value chains could help lessen the impact of future shocks.
The demand and supply shocks unleashed by the pandemic were expected to lead to a dramatic collapse in trade, but international commerce has proven more resilient than during previous global crises.
While goods trade fell sharply in the second quarter of 2020, it bounced back to pre-pandemic levels later in the year. The decline for services in 2020 (such as tourism) was worse, and has recovered more slowly, given persistent restrictions to contain infection in some countries.
International spillovers
Factors specific to the pandemic help explain these trade patterns.
First, goods imports were larger in 2020 than would be predicted by demand (and relative prices) alone, more so in countries with stringent lockdowns or severe outbreaks.
Second, lockdowns had significant—if unintended—international spillovers. Countries with trade partners that implemented more stringent lockdowns experienced larger declines in imports of goods. Trade partner lockdowns accounted, on average, for up to 60 percent of the decline in imports in the first half of 2020. These impacts were larger in industries that rely heavily on global value chains, and are further downstream in the production process (such as electronics).
The effects were short-lived, however, suggesting that global supply chains were resilient. And remote work also lessened the trade spillovers from lockdowns.
Even so, disruptions wrought by the pandemic led to calls for more domestic production of goods (reshoring). Our latest World Economic Outlook shows that dismantling global value chains is not the answer—more diversification, not less, improves resilience.
Global value chains adapted
Trade data affirm this. By mid-2020, Asian countries, which were hit early by COVID-19 but then managed to contain it (just when many European countries imposed severe mobility restrictions) saw an increase in their market share of GVC-related products of 4.6 percentage points in Europe, and 2.3 percentage points in North America. These gains were large and quick by historical standards but as countries adjusted to the pandemic, they’ve partially unwound, suggesting that the changes were likely temporary.Though global value chains have adjusted, some industries such as automobiles have faced large supply disruptions, pointing to the need to enhance resilience. We analyze two options for building supply chain resilience: diversifying inputs across countries, and greater substitutability of inputs.
Boosting trade resilience
We simulated the effects of disruptions in a global economic model and compared outcomes under higher levels of diversification, or higher substitutability (how easily a producer can switch inputs from a supplier in one country to another). We considered two scenarios: supply disruption in a single, large, input supplier country; and supply shocks to multiple nations.
Our analysis shows that diversification significantly reduces global economic losses in response to supply disruptions. Following a sizable (25 percent) labor supply contraction in a single, large global supplier, gross domestic product for the average economy falls by 0.8 percent under the baseline. In the high-diversification scenario, this decline is reduced by almost half.
Higher diversification also reduces volatility when multiple countries are hit by supply shocks. We estimate that the volatility of economic growth in the average country is reduced by around 5 percent in this scenario. Diversification offers little protection, however, when a major disruption hits all economies at the same time, like the first four months of the pandemic.
Countries can diversify by sourcing more intermediate inputs from abroad. Currently there is a significant “home bias” in the sourcing of such supplies. Firms in the Western Hemisphere, for example, source 82 percent of their intermediates domestically. Re-shoring of production would thus lower diversification further.
Substitutability can be achieved in two ways: through greater flexibility in production, such as when electric vehicle maker Tesla Inc. rewrote software to enable its cars to use alternative semiconductors in response to the semiconductor shortage; or by standardizing inputs internationally. For example, General Motors Co. recently announced that it is working with semiconductor suppliers to reduce the number of unique chips that it uses by 95 percent, down to just three families of microcontrollers. This standardization would replace a host of chips, eliminating the costs of substituting between them.
Considering again the scenario of a 25 percent labor supply contraction in a large global supplier of intermediate inputs, we find that with greater substitutability, GDP losses in all countries (other than the source country) are reduced by about four-fifths.
Policy implications
Ensuring equitable access to vaccines and treatments remains the first policy priority. Recent targeted lockdowns in China are a reminder that pandemic-related restrictions continue to have an impact far beyond the affected country. It is in the self-interest of all countries, including those with high vaccination rates to end the acute phase of the pandemic everywhere.
Amid rising concerns regarding global economic fragmentation and “friendshoring” following the war in Ukraine, our analysis also shows that greater diversification and substitutability in inputs can enhance resilience. While corporate decisions will predominantly shape the future resilience of global value chains, government policies can help by providing a supportive environment and lowering the costs.
One obvious area is improved infrastructure. The pandemic has shown that infrastructure investments in certain areas are critical to mitigate supply disruptions related to trade logistics. For example, upgrading and modernizing port infrastructure on key global shipping routes would help reduce global chokepoints. Better digital infrastructure to facilitate telework can also help mitigate spillovers to other countries.
Governments can also help to make information more widely available, so firms can make more strategic decisions. For example, automobile manufacturers on average conduct business directly with about 250 Tier1 suppliers, but this number rises to 18,000 suppliers in the full value chain. Improving access to information on inter-firm transactions and supply chain networks, by for example, digitalizing firms’ document filings, such as tax returns, can be helpful, especially for smaller firms with fewer resources.
Finally, reducing trade costs can help diversify inputs. There is room to reduce non-tariff barriers, which would give a significant medium-term economic boost, especially in emerging markets and low-income developing countries. In addition, reducing trade policy uncertainty, and providing an open and stable, rules-based trade policy regime, can support greater diversification.
Authors:

Davide Malacrino
Adil Mohommad
Andrea Presbitero

— This blog, based on Chapter 4 of the April 2022 World Economic Outlook, “Global Trade and Value Chains During the Pandemic,” includes research by Galen Sher and Ting Lan, under the guidance of Shekhar Aiyar, and support from Shan Chen, Bryan Zou, Youyou Huang, and Ilse Peirtsegaele. The analysis was concluded in early 2022, prior to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and does not focus on the implications of the war for global trade and value chains.
Compliments of the IMF.
The post IMF | Global Trade Needs More Supply Diversity, Not Less first appeared on European American Chamber of Commerce New York [EACCNY] | Your Partner for Transatlantic Business Resources.

‘Emerging firms are quickly making inroads into critical financial services, and often taking on more risk than traditional banks.’
Technology sometimes moves at a dizzying pace. When it comes to innovation in financial activities, often referred to as FinTech, the world is seeing major advances.
For banks, FinTech disrupts core financial services and pushes them to innovate to remain relevant. For consumers, it means potentially wider access to better services. Such changes also raise the stakes for regulators and supervisors—while most individual FinTech firms are still small, they can scale up very rapidly across both riskier clients and business segments than traditional lenders.
This combination of fast growth and increasing importance of FinTech financial services for the functioning of financial intermediation can come with system-wide risks, which we cover in our latest Global Financial Stability Report.
Adding risk
Digital banks are growing in systemic importance in their local markets. Also known as neobanks, they are more exposed than their traditional counterparts to risks from consumer lending, which usually has fewer buffers against losses because it tends to be more uncollateralized. Their exposure also extends to higher risk-taking in their securities portfolio, as well as higher liquidity risks (specifically, liquid assets held by neobanks relative to their deposits tend to be lower than what would be held by traditional banks).
These factors also create a challenge for regulators: the risk management systems and overall resilience of most neobanks remain untested in an economic downturn.
Not only do FinTech firms take on more risks themselves, they also exert pressure on long-established industry rivals. Look for instance at the United States, where FinTech mortgage originators follow an aggressive growth strategy in periods when home lending is expanding, such as during the pandemic. Competitive pressure from FinTech firms significantly hurt profitability of traditional banks, and this trend is set to continue.

Another technological innovation, which has grown rapidly in the past two years, is decentralized finance, a crypto-based financial network without a central intermediary. Also known as DeFi, it offers the potential of delivering more innovative, inclusive, and transparent financial services thanks to greater efficiency and accessibility.
However, DeFi also involves the buildup of leverage, and is particularly vulnerable to market, liquidity, and cyber risks. Cyberattacks, which can be severe for traditional banks, are often lethal for these platforms, stealing financial assets and undermining user trust. The lack of deposit insurance in DeFi adds to the perception of all deposits being at risk. Historically, large customer withdrawals often follow news of cyberattacks on providers.

DeFi activities mainly occur in crypto-asset markets, but growing adoption by institutional investors has strengthened the links to traditional financial institutions. In some economies, DeFi is helping to accelerate cryptoization, in which residents embrace crypto assets instead of the local currency.
Stepped-up regulation
As more financial-services activity moves from regulated banks to entities and platforms with little or no oversight, so do the associated risks. Despite FinTech stepping in to challenge traditional banks on their own playing field, they bring more than competition. In fact, the two often remain intertwined, including through the provision of liquidity and leverage by banks to FinTechs.
These pose challenges for financial authorities in the form of regulatory arbitrage (in which firms move or set up operations in less-regulated sectors and regions) and interconnectedness that may require supervisory and regulatory action, including better consumer and investor protection.
Policies that target both FinTech firms and traditional banks proportionately are needed. This way, the opportunities that FinTech offers are fostered, while risks are contained. For neobanks, this means stronger capital, liquidity, and risk-management requirements commensurate with their risks. For incumbent banks and other established entities, prudential supervision may need greater focus on the health of less technologically advanced banks, as their existing business models may be less sustainable over the long term.
The absence of governing entities mean DeFi is a challenge for effective regulation and supervision. Here, regulation should focus on the entities that are accelerating the rapid growth of DeFi, such as stablecoin issuers and centralized crypto exchanges. Supervisory authorities should also encourage robust governance, including industry codes and self-regulatory organizations. These entities could provide an effective conduit for regulatory oversight.
Authors:

Antonio Garcia Pascual
Fabio Natalucci

Compliments of the IMF.
The post IMF | Fast-Moving FinTech Poses Challenge for Regulators first appeared on European American Chamber of Commerce New York [EACCNY] | Your Partner for Transatlantic Business Resources.