Divya Kirti

Divya Kirti
Senior Economist
Research Department
International Monetary Fund
dkirti (at) imf.org

Biography

Divya Kirti is a Senior Economist in the Research Department at the International Monetary Fund. Previously, he worked in the Middle East and Central Asia Department. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University. His research interests include financial intermediation, corporate finance, and finance and innovation. His work has been published in leading journals including the Review of Financial Studies, the Journal of Financial Intermediation and the Journal of Banking & Finance, and covered by media outlets such as the New York Times, Financial Times, and Bloomberg.

The views expressed here are personal and should not be attributed to the IMF, its Executive Board, or its management.

Journal Articles

Lending standards and output growth. 2025, Journal of Financial Stability, Vol. 76, 101351.
Coverage: [NY Times], [IMF GFSR April 2018 Chapter 2]
What Private Equity Does Differently: Evidence from Life Insurance (with Natasha Sarin). 2024, Review of Financial Studies, Vol. 37, Issue 1, pp. 201–230.
Coverage: [NY Times], [Financial Times], [Bloomberg], [BIS Quarterly Review September 2024]
When gambling for resurrection is too risky, 2024. Journal of Banking & Finance, Vol. 162, 107125.
What are reference rates for?, 2022. Journal of Banking & Finance, Vol. 144, 106635.
Why do bank-dependent firms bear interest-rate risk?, 2020. Journal of Financial Intermediation, Vol. 41, 100823.

Working Papers

Integrating Fragmented Networks: Interoperability in Money and Payments (with Alexander Copestake, Maria Soledad Martinez Peria, and Yao Zeng), August 2025. [IMF WP 25/126] Coverage [Devdiscourse]
Credit and Product Innovation in Emerging Markets: Evidence from India (with Siddharth George, Herman Lange, Maria Soledad Martinez Peria, and Rajesh Vijayaraghavan), August 2025.
Financial frictions, technological adoption, and corporate emissions (with Damien Capelle, Eduardo Espuny Diaz, Germán Villegas Bauer, and Sharan Banerjee), July 2025.
The Insurer Channel of Monetary Policy (with Akshat Singh), March 2025. [IMF WP 25/54]
Mitigating climate change at the firm level: Mind the laggards (with Damien Capelle, Nicola Pierri, and Germán Villegas Bauer), February 2025. [IMF WP 23/242] Coverage: [IMF October 2023 WEO Chapter 1], [IMF October 2023 GFSR Chapter 3], [IMF April 2024 Fiscal Monitor Chapter 2] [IMF Italy 2023 Article IV Staff Report] [IMF Canada 2024 Article IV Staff Report] [IMF Germany 2024 Article IV Staff Report] [IMF Turkey 2024 Article IV Staff Report][IMF South Africa 2024 Article IV Staff Report][IMF Spain 2025 Article IV Selected Issues] [IMF APD/STA DP]

Policy Pieces, Book Chapters, and Datasets

Growing Retail Digital Payments: The Value of Interoperability (with Alexander Copestake and Maria Soledad Martinez Peria), June 2025. [IMF Fintech Note No. 2025/004] Coverage: [DoorDarshan Segment 1, Segment 2] [Mint Print, Video] [Times of India] [Economic Times] [ET Now] [India Today] [Firstpost] [CNBC India] [PTI] [NDTV] [Deccan Herald] [The Hindu] [Tripura Times] [AIR]
What Policy Combinations Worked? The Effect of Policy Packages on Bank Lending during COVID-19 (with Maria Soledad Martinez Peria, Prachi Mishra, and Jan Strasky), May 2025. [IMF WP 23/25] [CEPR DP 17880][Ashoka DP] Accepted, Journal of Financial Crises.
“Inflation and Bank Profits: Monetary Policy Trade-offs” (with Katharina Bergant, Mai Hakamada, and Rui Mano), January 2025. [IMF Staff Discussion Note No. 2025/1] [Covered in Panel Discussion at IMF Spring Meetings 2025]
Fund Diversity Policies, Diversity Characteristics, and Economist Promotions (with Christian Bogmans and Evgenia Weaver), June 2024. [Box 1 in 2022-2023 IMF Diversity & Inclusion Report]
Banks' Joint Exposure to Market and Run Risk (with Alexander Copestake and Yang Liu), September 2023. [IMF WP 23/200]
India's Banks: Lending to Productive Firms?, (with Siddharth George, Maria Soledad Martinez Peria, and Rajesh Vijayaraghavan), July 2023. [Chapter 4 in India's Financial System: Building the Foundation for Strong and Sustainable Growth] [IMF WP 22/73]
Tracking Economic and Financial Policies during COVID-19: An Announcement-Level Database (with Yang Liu, Maria Soledad Martinez Peria, Prachi Mishra, and Jan Strasky), June 2022. [IMF WP 22/114] [Public dataset] [CEPR DP 17879]
Limits to private climate change mitigation (with Deniz Igan and Dalya Elmalt), November 2021. [In Combatting climate change: A CEPR collection] [VoxEU]
The Disconnect between Financial Markets and the Real Economy (with Deniz Igan and Maria Soledad Martinez Peria), August 2020. [IMF Special Series on COVID-19]
Impact of COVID-19 on Insurers (with Mu Yang Shin), May 2020 [IMF Special Series on COVID-19]
IMF Saudi Arabia 2019 Article IV Staff Report, September 2019. [IMF Country Report No. 19/290]
Policies to Drive Diversification for Saudi Arabia (with input from Nahla Samargandi), September 2019. [IMF Country Report No. 19/291]
IMF Qatar 2019 Article IV Staff Report, June 2019. [IMF Country Report No. 19/146]
Policies to Drive Diversification for Qatar, June 2019. [IMF Country Report No. 19/147]
Gulf Cooperation Council: How Developed and Inclusive are Financial Systems in the GCC? (with Nabil Ben Ltaifa, Ali Alreshan, Aidyn Bibolov, Anta Ndoye, and Erik Roos), December 2018. [IMF Policy Paper]
IMF Saudi Arabia 2018 Article IV Staff Report, August 2018. [IMF Country Report No. 18/263]

Podcasts and Popular Pieces

India's Frictionless Payments (with Alexander Copestake and Maria Soledad Martinez Peria), September 2025. [IMF F&D]
Inflation and Bank Profits: Monetary Policy Trade-offs (with Katharina Bergant, Mai Hakamada, and Rui Mano), April 2025. [SUERF Policy Brief No. 1140]
Rising Rates May Trigger Financial Instability, Complicating Fight Against Inflation (with Katharina Bergant, Mai Hakamada, and Rui Mano), February 2025. [IMF Blog]
In Major Economic Shocks, Best Response Combines All-Out, Large-Scale Policies (with Maria Soledad Martinez Peria, Prachi Mishra, and Jan Strasky), February 2023. [IMF Blog]
Economics of Climate Change, August 2021. [IMF Podcast]
Limits of Sustainable Investing (with Dalya Elmalt), July 2021. [A Correction podcast]
The impact of COVID-19 on insurers (with Mu Yang Shin), June 2020. [VoxEU]
When High Yield Goes Boom, June 2018. [IMF Blog]

Permanent Working Papers

ESG Investing: Only Part of the Climate Puzzle (with Dalya Elmalt and Deniz Igan), April 2024. [IMF WP 21/112] [CEPR DP 16061] Coverage: [Callaway Climate Insights]
How Do Changing U.S. Interest Rates Affect Banks in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Countries? (with Olumuyiwa S Adedeji and Yacoub Alatrash), December 2019. [IMF WP 19/268]
How is the likelihood of fire sales in a crisis affected by the interaction of various bank regulations? (with Vijay Narasiman), March 2017. [IMF WP 17/68]

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