Imagine you were undergoing a programme of uncomfortable and unpleasant, but necessary, exercise and dietary changes to improve your health and found yourself slightly ahead of schedule, though some distance from your target. You sit down with your doctors and give them the good news: I’m doing bett...

Sometimes you just need to turn your brain off and then on again: much like your computer, it will rectify a multitude of sins. I spent two weeks away, moving up and down the Catalan coast, going from beach to beach, lying in the sand with detective novels and watching my three year old pelt up and ...

The Poverty Reduction and Growth Trust (PRGT), the IMF’s primary vehicle to support low-income countries (LICs), faces a severe financial crunch. There are many ways in which this hole could be plugged to restore the PRGT, but as explained in a new CGD note, there are obstacles or drawbacks to each ...

Through the summer, I’ve had a few excuses for the links showing up at random times, or disappearing: technical disasters, our automated system crashing, unexpected illnesses and the like. But for the next two weeks, it will be none of these things that keep these links away from you: I am going on ...

Nearly two years have passed since the G20 committed to recycling $100 billion of Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) from advanced economies to support more vulnerable countries. The most recent allocation of SDRs, the international reserve asset issued by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), was inten...

In London, it’s hard to tell what season it is. The weather veers from wet and miserable to sunny and Mediterranean, sometimes in the course of a few hours; or indeed minutes. Today, we took our son to the Tate Modern to see the Yayoi Kusama Infinity Rooms exhibition (highly recommended, watching hi...

I have to open by apologising for the very patchy appearance of the Links this summer: its been a combination of last-minute leave plans, technical snafus with our emailing system and a pile-up of deadlines that means the different demands on my time have been fighting like they’re on a dock in Mont...