By Udaibir Das
What began as a spread on a bond has become a spread across the sovereign balance sheet. The 2025 annual meetings have made clear that incremental adjustments will not suffice. Until new institutions and norms emerge, sovereigns will continue to pay in basis points and in ownership and discover that what the premium buys is not sovereignty, but postponement.
Background Paper No. 35
By Udaibir Das and Hansika Nath
By Udaibir Das
In a climate emergency, redundancy might be precisely what resilience requires. The sovereignty premium is that insurance price. Whether it’s worth paying depends on how much autonomy matters versus efficiency – and whether choice exists at all.
By Udaibir Das
What began as a spread on a bond has become a spread across the sovereign balance sheet. The 2025 annual meetings have made clear that incremental adjustments will not suffice. Until new institutions and norms emerge, sovereigns will continue to pay in basis points and in ownership and discover that what the premium buys is not sovereignty, but postponement.
By Udaibir Das
In a climate emergency, redundancy might be precisely what resilience requires. The sovereignty premium is that insurance price. Whether it’s worth paying depends on how much autonomy matters versus efficiency – and whether choice exists at all.
By Udaibir Das
Financial surveillance fails when it matters most. Every major financial disruption – from the 1997 Asian crisis to the 2008 financial crisis or recent geopolitical shocks from wars, sanctions and trade realignments – has exposed how blind spots persist in national systems, regional arrangements and global oversight.
By Udaibir Das
In dynamic-system terms, the global economy has shifted from a high-integration equilibrium towards a more fragmented state, but the transition path is still in motion. For financial institutions, the challenge is calibrating marginal gain in resilience against the marginal erosion of competitive advantage.
By Udaibir Das
While financial institutions promote debt swaps as ‘win-win’ solutions that address both debt distress and development financing, borrowing countries report a systematic failure in achieving both objectives, revealing an inversion of development finance principles.
By Udaibir Das
If climate finance is to support transitions that are durable and inclusive, it must evolve to accommodate precisely these kinds of interventions: institutionally grounded, locally designed and systemically significant.
By Udaibir Das
As private digital tokens gain ground, existing oversight and payment monitoring frameworks are struggling to keep pace. While regulators debate their response, the market—driven mainly by U.S.-based technology and market actors—is moving ahead.
By Udaibir Das
China must build on its institutional progress and the policy suggestions noted in the 2025 FSSA while adapting to a more fragmented global financial landscape. The shift from insulation, as pointed out by the IMF in 2010, as well as the shift to sensible integration, as outlined by the IMF in 2025, stays unfinished.
By Udaibir Das
As concessional finance declines, vulnerabilities mount and aid priorities shift, vulnerable low-income countries must increasingly rely on domestic sources of funding. Efficient capital markets are not a luxury – they are foundational infrastructure for economic growth.
By Udaibir Das
The key question is not whether the decline in aid and external assistance will push these economies towards more debt – it already does – but rather what kind of debt they will incur and what long-term implications it will bring.
By Udaibir Das
As AI takes on a greater role in economic analysis and policy, an unsettling question arises: will its ability to recognise systemic risks with historical precedents weaken with a lack of immediate algorithmic reference?
By Udaibir Das
The world’s most populous democracy faces a turbulent landscape of geopolitical rivalries, technological shifts and the urgency of climate action. The question remains: will global economic forces propel India toward leadership or will they impede its ascent?
By Udaibir Das
In 2024, Africa’s economic and political importance grew significantly, laying a strong foundation for 2025 to be a transformative year for the continent.
"Rebalancing Globalization: Perspectives from the Global South" attempts to provide a framework for the next phase of globalization that is rebalanced and sustainable and can address issues that matter to the Global South.
Edited Volume
By Anit Mukherjee, Dhruva Jaishankar, Alan Gelb, Pamla Gopaul, Marta Bengoa, Shayak Sengupta, Aude Darnal, Elizabeth Sidiropoulos, Udaibir Das, Veronica Jijon, and Lorrayne Porciuncula
Editors: Anit Mukherjee and Dhruva Jaishankar
By Udaibir Das
Where do Brics, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank overlap in their newly released communiques on the global economic landscape?
By Udaibir Das
How do sovereign wealth funds navigate current times while building portfolio resilience?
By Udaibir Das
How can countries with small and shallow financial markets adopt financial stability reports that are more suited for their economic conditions?
By Udaibir Das
How should China refine its financial reform strategy to better align with its economic ambitions and responsibilities?
By Udaibir Das
The decisions from the 20th National Congress and the Third Plenum collectively represent significant strides in reinforcing the financial sector’s role as China recalibrates its growth model.
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