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1. IINNTTEERRNNAATTIIOONNAALL MMOONNEETTAARRYY FFUUNNDD
FISCAL FORUM
THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF HIGH DEBT
AGENDA
IMF Headquarters (HQ2)
Washington, DC
Sunday, April 19, 2015
TIME SESSION VENUE
8:30—9:00 am Registration and Coffee
Padilha Vidal
Room
OAS
9:00—9:15 am Opening Session:
David Lipton, First Deputy Managing Director, IMF
9:15—10:00 am Session 1: Global Fiscal Trends and Outlook
This session will provide an overview of the global fiscal environment and medium-term
prospects.
Speaker Vitor Gaspar, Director
Fiscal Affairs Department
Q&A (20 minutes)
10:00—11:15 am Session 2: Rethinking Debt Reduction Strategies
Debt reduction in the current global economic environment of slow growth and systemically
weak fiscal positions will be particularly challenging. This session will discuss strategies that
reduce public debt in an equitable and sustainable manner. The focus will be on identifying
institutional mechanisms that can limit the political incentives for debt accumulation and
establish policy credibility for sustainable fiscal consolidation.
Chair Siddharth Tiwari, Director, Strategy, Policy, and Review Department, IMF
Speaker Carmen M. Reinhart, Minos A. Zombanakis Professor of the International
Financial System, Kennedy School
Harvard University (25 minutes)
Discussants Representatives from Australia and Mexico (10 minutes each)
Q&A (30 minutes)

2. 11:15—11:30 am Coffee
TIME SESSION VENUE
11:30—12:45 pm Session 3: Debt Restructuring and Resolution Mechanisms
Padilha Vidal
Room
OAS
The international community is still far from a consensus on the costs and benefits of a
structured mechanism for dealing with sovereign insolvencies. However, there is broad
agreement that this important issue should be brought back to the center of international
debate. This session will discuss lessons learned from debt crises and assess the ongoing work
on sovereign debt restructuring and debt resolution mechanisms.
Chair Sean Hagan, Director, Legal Department, IMF
Speaker Anne Krueger, Professor of International Economics at the Johns Hopkins
School of Advanced International Studies
(25 minutes)
Discussants Representatives from Argentina and the United Kingdom
(10 minutes each)
Q&A (30 minutes)
1:00—2:30 pm Keynote Lunch Speech: High Public Debt: Causes and Cures
HQ2 Dining Hall
Keynote Speaker Daron Acemoglu, Professor of Economics, MIT
3:00—4:30 pm Roundtable Discussion: The Political Economy of High Debt
HQ2 Conference
Hall 2
The high-level panel discussion will focus on the competing political, economic, and social
demands facing policymakers over coming decades. How can governments reconcile the
requirements of debt reduction with demographic pressures and weak economic growth?
How can countries strengthen public debt management? How can policymakers overcome
adjustment fatigue and secure permanent debt reduction? What is the optimal balance
between curbing spending and revenue mobilization?
Moderator David Wessel, Director of the Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary
Policy, Brookings Institution
Panelists Christine Lagarde, Managing Director, IMF
Helen Clark, Administrator, U.N. Development Programme and Former
Prime Minister of New Zealand
Luis de Guindos, Minister of Economy and Competitiveness (TBC)
Joaquim Levy, Finance Minister of Brazil