IMF Conference

 CALL FOR PAPERS 

The International Monetary Fund will hold the 27th Jacques Polak Annual Research Conference on November 12-13, 2026, in Washington D.C., USA.

The shifting spheres of geopolitical influence together with the emergence of new technologies such as stablecoins and other digital settlement instruments may have profound implications on the structure of the international monetary system with potential for new forms of currency competition and cooperation. At the same time, global imbalances are widening, accompanied by a narrowing base of growth drivers and increasingly inward-looking policies. Such trends have significant implications for global liquidity, capital flows and, ultimately, the overall stability of the international monetary system. Understanding how these geopolitical, technological, and macroeconomic forces interact is essential for assessing pathways for the evolution of the international monetary system.

The 2026 IMF Annual Research Conference seeks to bring together researchers and policymakers to discuss recent research and to discuss the prospects of shifting from a unipolar to a multipolar world and associated policy challenges.

The Program Committee welcomes empirical and theoretical work on topics including, but not limited to:

• Technology and the IMS: digital money, stablecoins, and cross border payment innovations.
• Geopolitical and digital fragmentation: implications for a shift towards a multipolar international monetary system.
• Global financial safety net: swap lines, regional arrangements, and multilateral institutions.
• Safe assets and reserves: changing demand, portfolio diversification, and financial stability.
• Global liquidity: drivers, transmission channels, and macro financial effects.
• Cross-border spillovers: real and financial channels of international shock propagation, evolving capital flow dynamics.
• Global imbalances: role of industrial and trade policies, financial and stock imbalances, fiscal and structural drivers.

Interested contributors should submit a full paper or an extended proposal via the submission portal, which can be accessed by clicking here. The deadline for submissions is June 15, 2026. Please use the contact author’s name as the name of the file (Last name, First name (e.g., Smith, John). The Program Committee will evaluate all proposals in terms of originality, analytical rigor, and policy relevance and will contact the authors whose papers have been selected by mid-July, 2026.¹ Further information on the conference program will be posted on this page.

Conference Program Committee: 
Jesús Fernández-Villaverde (Editor-in-Chief of the IMF Economic Review and the University of Pennsylvania)
Emine Boz (IMF, Co-Editor of the IMF Economic Review)
Manasa Patnam (IMF)
Ting Lan (IMF)

Conference Coordinators: 
Luisa Calixto
Nicole Jales
Daniela Rojas

¹Submissions co-authored with IMF staff members will be evaluated by the IMF Economic Review editor-in-chief.