The COVID-19 pandemic and global surge in inflation have raised daunting challenges for policymakers across the globe. Fiscal and monetary stimulus launched on an unprecedented scale to support the economy has led to bloated public debt in many countries, with emerging markets facing the additional burden of coping with the spillovers of external shocks, most notably from the concerted interest rate hikes in major economies. As global financial conditions continue to tighten while inflation remains persistently high, we have witnessed many emerging market economies increasingly adopt policy mixes - exchange rate intervention, capital flow management, and macroprudential measures to address risks to macroeconomic and financial stability. These developments bring to the forefront the need to understand the key determinants of macroeconomic and financial vulnerabilities to shocks in emerging markets, as well as to analyze the interactions and trade-offs between various policy tools employed.

The Call for Papers welcomes research on the theme “Monetary and Fiscal Policies in Emerging Markets Amid Heightened Uncertainty”. Possible topics include, but are not necessarily limited to, the following:

• Common and country-specific drivers of inflation dynamics and policy trade-offs;
• Spillovers and cross-border transmission channels of global shocks to emerging market economies, and factors that influence the transmission of these shocks;
• Debt vulnerabilities amidst global tightening financial conditions and implications of public and private debt overhang on macroeconomic performance and monetary and fiscal policies;
• Divergent emerging market economy responses to global and domestic monetary policy shocks and the role of country fundamentals and macro-financial vulnerabilities;
• Trade-offs and interactions between monetary, exchange rate, macroprudential and capital flow policy responses towards addressing macroeconomic and financial stability risks;
• Monetary-fiscal policy interactions and trade-offs, and the extent to which inflation and exchange rate dynamics are conditioned on this nexus.

Accepted papers will be presented in a conference jointly organized by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the Puey Ungphakorn Institute for Economic Research (PIER) in Bangkok, Thailand on May 20-21, 2024. The organizers will provide economy-class travel and hotel accommodation for at least 2 nights to one author per paper, who must be a citizen of an ADB member economy.  The papers will also be considered for publication in a special section of the Journal of International Money and Finance (JIMF) in 2024, following a fast-track review process. Please refer to the submission guidelines for further information.