Risk analysis is an important element in growth forecasting, and detecting vulnerabilities within the global financial system helps policymakers mitigate risks. In an effort to broaden the scope of its risk analysis, the IMF developed a new open-source tool that looks at the entire distribution of future GDP growth rather than the traditional point forecasts. The tool is now shared on GitHub, one of the world's biggest software development platforms. Prasad Ananthakrishnan heads the strategy and planning unit in the IMF's Monetary and Capital Markets department, and helped develop the Growth at Risk forecasting tool, as it is known. In this podcast, Ananthakrishnan says making the tool available to other economists on Github will make it better over time and help demystify the forecasting process

Economists around the world can contribute to the development of the IMF's new open-source global financial risk analysis tool. (iStock by Getty images/akindo)