When the 2008 financial crisis pushed the global economy to the brink, governments intervened with massive taxpayer-funded bailouts for banks deemed “too big to fail.” This sparked a furious debate: ...

A moral hazard happens when a party takes an excessive risk or enters a business relationship in bad faith knowing another party is economically responsible for the outcome. For example, during the ...

Editor’s note: The Economist is making some of its most important coverage of the covid-19 pandemic freely available to readers of The Economist Today, our daily newsletter. To receive it, register ...

The Economic Issues series aims to make available to a broad readership of nonspecialists some of the economic research being produced on topical issues by IMF staff. The series draws mainly from IMF ...