This paper is WILD: “Nestlé’s entry into LMIC formula markets caused about 212,000 infant deaths per year among mothers without clean water access… and has led to approximately 10.9 million excess infant deaths between 1960 and 2015.” www.nber.org/system/files...

A blog on Development and Climate Finance Targets: The Worst of All Worlds. www.cgdev.org/blog/develop... TLDR: We really need climate finance agreements to have targets for adaptation and development finance in the poorest countries ....

Development and Climate Finance Targets: The Worst of All Worlds

Last week, the UN Foundation and the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs kindly asked me to talk at an informal session on the coherence between development and climate finance. I learned a l...

cgdev.org

Die Hard is about a (prospective) bondholder claiming coupon and principal payments on (now obsolete) debt securities. Die Hard is a sovereign finance movie.

Mark Copelovitch@mcopelov.bsky.social · 2y ago

Die Hard is about the airing of grievances & impossible feats of strength by an otherwise ordinary guy. Die Hard is a Festivus movie.

Had a request to look at some stuff in the latest WEO. For fun, I compiled the countries with the highest projected interest to government revenue ratios in 2025. Egypt and Pakistan are on a league of their own, 6 of the top 10 are African countries, and notable presence of India in this group 🧐

IDA reaches $100 B replenishment which should allow it to sustain current program levels around $33-$34 B a year in low cost financing. (1/3) www.worldbank.org/en/news/pres...

World Bank Group Announces Record $100 Billion IDA Replenishment

The World Bank Group and partner governments have mobilized a record replenishment to the International Development Association (IDA), the world’s largest source of development finance for low-income ...

worldbank.org

Talking with the FT about the Ivory Coast / World Bank swap deal. Couple of good things on this one. Managed to drive down intermediation costs by side stepping SPV structure and allowed the country to allocate proceeds from transaction. on.ft.com/3BhkuzW

Ivory Coast turns to World Bank to replace costly debt

Swap deal to buy back bonds issued in January comes as African borrowers struggle under expensive debt burdens

on.ft.com

This IMF Independent Evaluation Office sounds VERY promising. Who could have thought that side stepping rules for large loans due political interference of large shareholders was a problem? 😉 www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

a man in a suit and tie is running down a sidewalk with the words let me in written on it .

ALT: a man in a suit and tie is running down a sidewalk with the words let me in written on it .

media.tenor.com

Christmas has arrived early for the debt community with the release of the World Bank International Debt Report 2024 🎅 After a quick scan (still have to go through the data), two things caught my attention 🧵 www.worldbank.org/en/programs/....

International Debt Report

The World Bank’s International Debt Report features external debt statistics and analysis for low- and middle-income countries and information on new bond issuance in international capital markets.

worldbank.org

Another debt swap backed by a loan instead of a bond issuance. Something I really like about this transaction is that secures long-term funding in local currency, reducing costs while improving resilience to external shocks www.reuters.com/business/env...

Barbados completes world first debt swap for climate resilience

Barbados has completed the world's first 'debt-for-climate' swap aimed at raising money to help the Caribbean island build resilience in its water systems to the damaging effects of climate change.

reuters.com

Fifty. Six. Percent. Increase. In. The deaths. Of. Pregnant. People.

St. John Barned-Smith@stjbs.bsky.social · 2y ago

"Across Texas, residency applications in ob-gyn dropped significantly. Data from the Gender Equity Policy Institute revealed a fifty-six-per-cent spike in maternal deaths in the state between 2019 and 2022." www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

1/6 After reading Kevin Gallagher and Mark Sobel's new piece on debt relief, I note that I am also reading Martin Daunton's very interesting new book in which, early in the book, he discusses how a US declaration of non-intervention in... www.omfif.org/2024/11/dist...

Distressed LICs need debt relief, not more new debt - OMFIF

IMF emphasis on liquidity strains is off target

omfif.org

Great overview of status and main characteristics of the wave of recent debt restructurings by JPM. Useful to think about comparisons with historical benchmarks. In most cases NPV relief is below historical median of 38-42%. A harbinger of serial restructurings?

Are you passionate about economics? Do you want to do a master which will change your life and help you change the world. Come to the Geneva Graduate Institute!

To understand global south anger at the COP29 climate finance goal it's crucial to understand two key numbers. 1️⃣ "At least" $300bn/year - developed nations agreed to "take the lead" in mobilising this for developing countries 2️⃣ $1.3tn/year - a wider, vaguer goal They sound pretty big! But...

IMF surcharges reached US$ 1.9 billion, equivalent to 53% of lending income and 39% of operational income in FY2024. Mind you, these profits were made from the most vulnerable borrowers of the Fund. Unfortunately, the recent reform failed to address the structural problems of the policy.

Tim Jones@tim-jones6.bsky.social · 2y ago

The IMF made $6.2 billion profit in the last year, and now has reserves of $33 billion www.imf.org/en/Publicati...

Public statisticians specialised in development assistance and climate finance accounting gimmicks looking at the COP29 text.

Obsessing over quantity and forgetting quality of climate finance is the Baku COP’s biggest failure. Not that $300bn is too low to meet demands for action and justice (though that’s true). It’s that the world’s poorest & least responsible for climate change will be robbed by it.

The co-facilitators of the UN Financing for Development Conference have just published an elements paper based on over 300 contributions. Important document as it sets the blueprint fro the conference next year in Spain. financing.desa.un.org/sites/defaul...

The problem with external debt financing of investment in adaptation is the currency mismatch. Projects with a lot of local content which will not expand export capacity. A recipe for chronic indebtedness and financial fragility.

Paddy Carter@paddycarter.bsky.social · 2y ago

Aside from the fact that the politics in most developed countries are not amenable to a huge increase in transfers to developing countries, it seems to me concessional debt (with a grant element) is usually what's needed as opposed to pure grants: www.bii.co.uk/en/news-insi...

A thread with interesting tidbits from the new IMF guidance note on sovereign restructurings, as I read along🧵⤵️ www.imf.org/en/Publicati...

Guidance Note On The Financing Assurances And Sovereign Arrears Policies And The Fund's Role In Debt Restructurings

Under its Articles of Agreement, the Fund may only provide financing to assist members to resolve their balance of payments problems and restore medium-term external viability and may only do so under...

imf.org

For those negotiating in Baku on the #NCQG climate finance goal @edwickstead.bsky.social and I have calculated two new scenarios in our @cgdev.bsky.social model of baselines relating to multilateral development banks and the latest negotiating text 1/5

Quite interesting that the last two swap deals have been funded through loans instead of bond issuances. Is this a sign of lack of appetite from the market?

Reuters@reuters.com · 2y ago

The Bahamas has unlocked more than $120 million to fund the conservation and management of its oceans and mangroves with a debt swap financed by Standard Chartered and backed by the private sector reut.rs/3YYg8pj

Nothing that some hard currency debt financing on critical infrastructure for adaptation with no substantial returns cannot make worse… sorry, I meant fix 🤣

Josh Gabbatiss@joshgabbatiss.bsky.social · 2y ago

++NEW CLIMATE FINANCE TEXT++ It finally includes the core number that developed countries have so far resisted: $250bn a year for developing countries. It also has a target of $1.3tn a year... but only as part of a wider goal including "all public and private sources"

The new #COP29 finance draft text is out and here’s the key part

++NEW CLIMATE FINANCE TEXT++ Cut from 25 pages to 10. Number of bits in square brackets, which are undecided, cut from 415 to 46. It contains 2 options for the goal "emanating from the ministerial consultations” - one with developing country priorities and one with developed.

US set to forgive US$ 4.5 billion in loans to Ukraine. To place this figure in context, it’s equivalent to 4.5 times the debt forgiven to 31 countries through the IMF CCRT between 2020 and 2022 (US$ 967 million). Debt relief has always been a matter of political will. www.reuters.com/world/biden-...

Biden administration moves to forgive $4.7 billion of loans to Ukraine

The Biden administration has moved to forgive about $4.7 billion in U.S. loans to Ukraine, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said on Wednesday, as outgoing officials seek to do what they can before leaving office to bolster Ukraine in its war against Russia.

reuters.com

What a piece on academic fraud in business schools. Its mind blowing how much tampering with data has been normalised. www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...

The Business-School Scandal That Just Keeps Getting Bigger

The rot runs deeper than almost anyone has guessed.

theatlantic.com

Important new article on RMB internationalization by @marinazucker.bsky.social

Marina Zucker Marques@marinazucker.bsky.social · 2y ago

📢Glad to share my article "Currency Internationalization, payment infrastructures and central banks: An institutional analysis of renminbi internationalization" is out at Research in International Business and Finance🧵 Article www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... Blog www.bu.edu/gdp/2024/11/...

While I'm on a tear about finance solutionism; here is more evidence that insurance instruments aka "risk transfer" is/are *not* climate finance: www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Climate-Hit Nations Wait Years for $370 Million Fund to Deliver

A German-led program announced at United Nations climate talks in Egypt two years ago has deployed just a tiny share of funds to the climate vulnerable countries it’s seeking to help.

bloomberg.com