The Icelandic government has launched a review of the tax system, with a view to improving its income redistribution, growth orientation, and efficiency features, as well as increasing its revenue mobilization potential. It aims at minimizing detrimental effects on employment and growth, and at...

This paper highlights the significance of open-economy considerations in the analysis of tax reforms. It focuses on domestic and international consequences of revenue-neutral conversion between income and value-added tax systems. The principal result is that the direction of changes in key...

This paper highlights that central banks from Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru (the LA5 countries) reaped the benefits of what they sowed in successfully weathering the global crisis. The adoption of far-reaching institutional, policy, and operational reforms during the last two decades...

This report provides an assessment of fiscal transparency practices in Brazil. The authorities have completed the fiscal transparency questionnaire prepared by the IMF staff. The assessment has two parts that are discussed in this study. In the first part, descriptions of practice, prepared by...

This paper presents the report on Brazil’s Observance of Standards and Codes on the Financial Action Task Force Recommendations for Anti-Money Laundering and Combating the Financing of Terrorism. Brazilian authorities report that the major sources of illegal proceeds are crimes against the...

We look into Brazil''s public sector accounts during the two administrations of President Fernando Henrique Cardoso: 1995-98 and 1998-2002. We underline the fact that the authorities'' attitude was as important as the pace of the structural reforms for understanding the dynamics of the public...

This paper analyzes several issues regarding fiscal sustainability and fiscal adjustment in Brazil during 1990 and searches for econometric evidence of a monetary dominant regime during some subperiods. The following statistical data are also presented in detail: macroeconomic flows and...

Although accommodative policies and widespread indexation may account for the persistence of high inflation, they cannot explain changes in the inflation rate. This paper examines the causes of such changes for the high-inflation episodes immediately preceding the recent “heterodox” attempts...

This paper discusses the behavior of futures prices for foreign exchange in Brazil during a period of high inflation and successive stabilization attempts (1989-92). After testing for futures prices unbiasedness and predicability by applying the Generalized Method of Moments, the paper argues...

This paper describes major economic developments in Brazil in 1997. A number of issues were analyzed in the paper, including the slow progress being made in the negotiation of the fiscal adjustment programs with the states, the sustainability of the growing current account deficit, as well as...