Banking supervision and regulation by the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) remain strong. This assessment confirms the 2014 Basel Core Principles assessment that the HKMA achieves a high level of compliance with the BCPs. The Basel III framework (and related guidance) and domestic and...

This Selected Issues paper on Switzerland models the evolving behavior of the Swiss franc relative to the world's major reserve currencies and considers possible reasons for the shifts. Economic fundamentals, including country-partners and currency of denomination of Swiss trade and finance, are...

This Selected Issues paper analyzes France's fiscal stance using a structural stochastic model. The theoretical model features a forward-looking benevolent government that needs to decide the optimal fiscal stance given the level of public debt, the cyclical position of the economy, and...

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 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...

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 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....