Surveys suggest that Denmark ranks close to or slightly above the OECD average in terms of student and adult skills, even though Denmark spends more than many OECD countries on education, labour market policies and adult learning. Sluggish productivity growth over the past two decades raises the...

It is vital to achieve both high levels of sustained, long lasting growth and better income distribution through the Accelerated Growth Strategy in Senegal. In terms of macroeconomic performance, the annual average growth rate dropped owing to exogenous shocks and low productivity in the...

The Armenian government adopted the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP), and the first years of the PRSP implementation have evidently resulted in the significant reduction of both poverty and extreme poverty. The main focus has been sustainable economic growth, institutional reforms, and...

This Selected Issues paper reviews recent developments in growth and employment in Bulgaria and highlights key constraints to growth suggested by cross-country competitiveness studies. Bulgaria’s GDP has grown substantially since economic and financial stabilization in 1997. The global...

During the transition process, many existing social sector institutions and policies were significantly eroded and their underlying character changed. As a result, they often do not redistribute to the poorest, nor generally serve the role of facilitating economic change. Social sector reforms...

This Selected Issues paper on Panama explores the current situation and trends of the Caja del Seguro Social (CSS) in Panama. The autonomy is embedded in its Organic Law, which also provides the agency with the right to have separate funds from the central government. The slowdown in economic...

In recent years, the IMF has released a growing number of reports and other documents covering economic and financial developments and trends in member countries. Each report, prepared by a staff team after discussions with government officials, is published at the option of the member country.