While federal credit programs are varied in form, their fiscal and economic effects arise primarily from the same source—each program’s subsidy component. Recent credit reform proposals would make control of credit subsidies the primary focus of budgetary efforts. By subjecting these...

This paper assesses Vietnam’s 2001 Article IV Consultation, First Review Under the Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility (PRGF), and a Request for Waiver and Modification of Performance Criteria. Economic performance has been positive so far in 2001, under the first-year PRGF-supported...

In the past decade, most of the EU New Member States experienced a severe credit-boom bust cycle. This paper argues that the credit boom-bust cycle was to a large extent the result of factors external to the region (“bad luck”). Rapid credit growth followed from a high liquidity in global...

Export credit agencies (ECAs) have played a critical role in financing for developing countries in recent years, and officially supported export credits have been growing in volume. The current export credit exposure to developing countries and economies in transition has reached almost half a...

This paper reviews key areas of central banking reform in a sample of centrally planned economies undergoing transition to market-based systems. The discussion draws mainly on the experiences of four countries, Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and China. Significant efforts have been made, or...

In recent years a number of countries have undertaken far-reaching reforms of their financial sectors. Generally speaking, financial sector reforms aim at achieving greater flexibility of interest rates, an enhanced role for market forces in credit allocation, increased independence for the...

This 2002 Article IV Consultation for the Kingdom of the Netherlands—Aruba highlights that after growing at more than 4 percent per year in 1996–2000, the Aruba economy experienced two years of retrenchment, with GDP falling an estimated 1.2 percent in 2001 and 3.8 percent in 2002....

This study examines the challenges and issues facing policymakers in highly dollarized economies. Focusing on Cambodia, which achieved almost complete dollarization during 1991-95, the authors review recent developments in the literature on dollarization and examine the costs and benefits of...

The Selected Issues paper examines the dynamics of the inflation process in the United Kingdom, particularly the influence of external shocks. The paper provides a brief summary of existing empirical work. It presents the expectations-augmented Phillips curve model used in the analysis. The...