This paper proposes a package of policy reforms and a funding strategy to ensure that the Fund has the capacity to respond flexibly to LICs' needs during the pandemic and recovery. The key policy reforms proposed include: -- raising the normal annual/cumulative limits on access to PRGT resources...

Low-income countries are being hit hard by the global financial crisis. They are facing a sharp contraction in export growth, FDI inflows, and remittances, and lower-than-committed aid. But a marked recovery is in prospect for 2010 helped by rising world demand and supported by short-term...

The IMF's surveillance over its member's economic policies is one of the institution's central activities. In keeping with the increasing transparency of the IMF; the Executive Board askes a group of independent external experts to evaluate IMF surveillance, to assess the effectiveness of such...

This paper uses a simple model to analyze the forces that determine the size of the public sector and the quality of workers employed in that sector. Workers are heterogeneous, and the public sector chooses an employment strategy that maximizes a social welfare function U(s, Y) that depends on...

We provide a framework for analyzing the choice between optimal and robust monetary policy rules in the presence of paradigm uncertainty. We first discuss the conditions on uncertainty that render a robust rule preferable to an optimal rule. Second, we show how the degree of risk aversion of the...

With much healthcare publicly funded, Hong Kong''s rapidly aging population will significant raise fiscal pressure over coming decades. We ask what the implications are of meeting these costs by public funding, or private funding voluntarily or through mandates. Our simulations suggest that...

This report, commissioned by the Executive Board, was prepared by a committee of academic economists. The report assesses the appropriateness of current research activities, the quality and added value of the IMF's economic research and its utility in the IMF among its member countries and...