Eswar Prasad on Escaping the Doom Loop

IMF Podcasts

Source details

The podcast was published May 6, 2026.
The episode centers on Eswar S. Prasad’s latest book, The Doom Loop.
The project began as an exploration of promising recent trends in global economic and power structures but revealed darker dynamics instead.
The podcast highlights how positive forces that normally bring stability can begin to work against each other, producing a negative feedback loop that has led to the erosion of institutions across the globe.
A transcript is available.
A book review will appear in the June issue of IMF's Finance & Development magazine.

The Doom Loop concept:
- Describes dynamics in which mutually reinforcing forces that typically stabilize systems instead interact to create negative feedback.
- Explains how those dynamics contribute to institutional erosion worldwide.
Analytical focus:
- Shifts from initial optimism about structural trends to diagnosing a darker set of interactions undermining stability.
Institutional implications:
- The episode links the Doom Loop dynamics directly to the weakening of institutions, implying broad systemic risk.

ESWAR PRASAD is a professor of economics at Cornell University and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.
The episode features insights drawn from Eswar Prasad’s book, The Doom Loop.

The episode is part of the IMF podcast program produced by Bruce Edwards.
- Bruce Edwards is an award-winning audio producer and journalist who produces the IMF podcast program and aims to showcase economists’ research in IMF podcasts.
The episode is presented under F&D Magazine and categorized within Geoeconomics.