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...

The issue of productivity growth in Canada has received considerable attention reflecting its marked slowdown since the early 1970s and concerns about its implications for Canadian competitiveness. To better understand productivity developments in Canada, it is useful to decompose total factor...

The paper presents Canada’s report on the Observance of Standards and Codes on the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) recommendations for Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Combating the Financing of Terrorism (CFT). Canada has strengthened its overall AML/CFT regime since its last FATF mutual...

The spillovers from the U.S. economy to Canada have been assessed. It uses structural vector autoregressions to analyze the role of financial linkages in real and financial spillovers from the United States to Canada. The implications of Canada’s predictable price level have been analyzed....

This 2002 Article IV Consultation highlights that the Canadian economy has slowed substantially since late 2000. The slowdown in large part has reflected the slowing in the United States economy, which has reduced growth in Canada’s exports and contributed to weakening private investment. In...

This paper documents two aspects of Canada’s regional diversity and compares the results with those across U.S. regions. Although gradually converging, Canadian provinces exhibit a considerably diverse economic structure. The paper suggests that the reduction in macroeconomic volatility in...

This Selected Issues paper assesses the long-term fiscal position of Canada. Simulations based on current tax and spending policies suggest that the fiscal position will remain favorable until well into the middle of the century, and relatively modest adjustments would be required to make these...

The Canadian economy ended the 1990s with a very strong performance, underpinned by the sound macroeconomic policies put in place during the decade. The Bank of Canada raised interest rates markedly in 2000 as estimates of slack in the economy were narrowing rapidly. Executive Directors agreed...