This Selected Issues paper estimates a dynamic model of foreign currency loans to households in Austria to analyze their behavior and assess the effectiveness of measures intended to stem their rise. This paper also studies the developments in Austria’s economic linkages with Germany and the...

Peru’s fiscal framework embedded in the Fiscal Responsibility and Transparency Law (FRTL) has proved to be effective in reducing debt. The FRTL embodies some countercyclical elements in response to output or commodity price shocks. The combination of a provision for a moderate deficit on the...

The Austrian authorities introduced new supervisory guidance aiming at constraining the funding model of the three largest Austrian banks’ subsidiaries. The guidance introduced the concept of Loan-to-Local-Stable-Funding Ratio (LLSFR) as a monitoring tool of business model sustainability....

Austria’s federal system comprises the federal government and nine provinces (Länder). The federal system is rather centralized by international standards, with the federal government (including social security funds) accounting for about 70 percent of general government spending, the...

This Selected Issues paper for Austria reports the impact of the government size, in addition to tax and expenditure composition, on real GDP growth. In addition to having a large public sector relative to the European Union (EU) 15 average, the composition of revenues is skewed, on the one...

This Selected Issues paper for Austria looks at the fiscal burden facing Austria owing to aging, and the policy steps necessary to address it. It gives a short description of the Austrian pension, health care, and long-term care systems, and describes how aging will affect the costs of these...

This paper presents an overview of the different methodologies that can be used to measure the amount of available slack in an economy. A comparison of these alternatives reveals that the evolution of the Nairu is crucial for understanding recent cyclical developments in the French economy. A...

This Selected Issues paper focuses on the medium-term budgetary framework (MTBF) for Austria. Austria is part of a trend among many countries to consider some form of MTBF. This paper describes the proposed framework in Austria and assesses it in light of the experience of other countries. The...