IMF Podcasts

South Africa can celebrate significant progress in its first 20 years of democracy, but faces the challenge of reviving a weak economy. Addressing structural constraints such as electricity shortages are key to increasing growth.

Despite his reputation as the father of greedy capitalism, Adam Smith did a great deal of thinking about the human condition and how to be a better, more generous person. One economist believes that Smith could change your life. Listen to Russ Roberts on economics as entertainment:

Economic ideas can be a hard pill to swallow for non-academics, and yet virtually everyone can benefit from understanding them. Economist Russ Roberts discusses how he uses stories, rap music and the internet to help the medicine go down.

Data has gained prominence as a vital building block for making sound policy. IMF Director of Statistics, Louis Marc Ducharme talks about how the IMF is helping make data more widely available to policy makers.

When the richest 85 people hold the combined wealth of 3.5 Billion poor people, economist Jose Antonio Ocampo explains that Income inequality can shift from a human rights issue to a marker of potentially dangerous economic instability.

Labor market flexibility is considered by many to be essential to an efficient market economy. But a top-level official of the ILO says there's been an excessive focus on worker flexibility. Off the back of an IMF/World Bank seminar, she explained how economic growth can be nurtured to benefit all.

As Uganda's economy continues to grow, so does the need for more efficient ways of managing large development projects. The country's finance minister says the objectives of each program must be clear, for capacity building to be effective.

Private investment is down in India, partly due to the lack of coal and electricity. India's new chief economic adviser Arvind Subramanian says removing those bottlenecks is key to increasing growth.

Caribbean economies have been slow to recover from the global financial crisis. This week, the IMF and the government of Jamaica will host a high level forum that will discuss ways of boosting the economies of the region.

The work of master economist John Maynard Keynes has been key in the resolution of successive crises from the Great Depression to the recent global financial crisis. An IMF economist gives an overview of the man, his ideas and their impact on economic policy.