A Few White Papers
you are currently viewing::What Drives Crypto Mining? Evidence from Hardware ImportsJuly 10, 2026-Summary We propose a novel measurement approach using detailed customs data that tracks exports of crypto mining hardware from the world's dominant producers. This trade-based proxy allows us to analyze the global distribution of mining hardware imports and identify their key drivers, guided by a stylized model. Empirically, mining surges respond strongly to global factors such as cryptocurrency prices and hardware costs, while domestic factors-including electricity prices and ambient temperature-shape the cross-country distribution of activity. Our findings highlight how global crypto markets, natural endowments, and policy choices jointly influence mining incentives, offering valuable insights for policymakers concerned with financial stability risks and energy subsidy misuse. Source: imf.org |
IMF Staff Country Report Singapore: Selected Issues
July 20, 2026-Private consumption ratios differ markedly across advanced economies, with Singapore recording one of the lowest of its peer group. Using a sample of 31 advanced economies and a rich set of potential drivers, the analysis finds that slow-moving structural factors like demographics, economic structure, and development levels are important correlates of these differences, while cyclical factors appear to play a more limited role.
Graying Asia: How Aging Is Reshaping Banking
July 17, 2026--Summary
This paper explores how demographic shifts, particularly population aging, are reshaping banking in Asia-Pacific’s bank-dominated financial systems. Using household surveys as well as bank-level and country-level panel data, we show that aging populations are associated, with shifts in bank portfolios away from traditional loans (with lower loan-to-deposit and loan-to-asset ratios), driven by changes in households' financial behavior.
The Changing Landscape of Financial Integration in Asia-Pacific
July 17, 2026--Summary
Asia-Pacific has undergone a profound transformation over the past few decades, increasing its share in global trade and GDP. This paper assesses to what extent Asia-Pacific's role in global finance has expanded commensurately and whether it has become more integrated by systematically analyzing crossborder financial data.
Aggregate Gains from AI and Their Distribution: Global Evidence from Usage Data
July 10, 2026-Summary
How large are the gains from AI, and how are they distributed across occupations? Using five waves of the Anthropic Economic Index (January 2025 to February 2026), we construct two novel measures from observed AI usage across countries over the world.
Gold in Central Bank Reserves: Strategic Considerations, Market Risks, and Practical Guidance
July 9, 2026-Gold has re-emerged as a prominent component of central bank reserves, largely reflecting valuation gains from higher gold prices rather than large-scale accumulation. This Note assesses gold's role from a reserve management perspective, emphasizing that while gold carries no credit risk and may support long-term balance-sheet resilience, it is highly volatile, offers only conditional hedging and diversification benefits, and is ill-suited to the liquidity tranche of reserves.
Financial Market Infrastructures Evolution in a Tokenized Economy
July 2, 2026-Summary
This paper examines how tokenization and distributed ledger technology may transform Financial Market Infrastructures (FMIs) by enabling smart contracts to perform a growing share of functions traditionally undertaken by central securities depositories, central counterparties, and trade repositories.
The Global Versus Local Identification of Macroeconomic Damages
June 30, 2026--Key takeaways:
Adrien Bilal and Diego R. Känzig's "The Macroeconomic Impact of Climate Change: Global Versus Local Temperature" (QJE, 2026) challenges the conventional approach of estimating physical climate risk-induced macroeconomic damages.
The paper argues that global temperature variation may capture a broader macroeconomic climate signal than local temperature variability alone, leading to substantially higher damage estimates than those reported in much of the established literature.
Artificial Intelligence and Cybersecurity in the Financial Sector
June 30, 2026-Summary
Artificial intelligence is reshaping cyber risk in the financial sector by accelerating the speed, frequency, and breadth of vulnerability discovery and potential exploitation. As AI becomes more deeply embedded in financial institutions and market infrastructures, it can strengthen cyber defense but also heighten systemic risk-particularly through shared digital infrastructure, common service providers, and machine-speed attack-defense dynamics that outpace human response.
Ireland: Selected Issues
June 29, 2026-The Irish economy has remained resilient amid trade and geopolitical tensions, but its favorable outlook faces challenges and uncertainties.
World Economic Forum-Top 10 Emerging Technologies of 2026
June 23, 2026--The top 10 emerging technologies of 2026 are:
1. Everything-to-grid energy
Everything-to-grid energy transforms buildings, vehicles and devices from passive electricity consumers into active grid resources, storing and returning power in real-time. New battery chemistries, smarter coordination software and updated compensation models are making this possible at scale.
