The Fund's existing facilities for low-income countries (LICs) provide a vehicle for the speedy provision of financial assistance to member countries hit by natural disasters, either through the Rapid Credit Facility (RCF) or through augmentation of the funding already being provided through...

This paper describes how economic behavior in the market for health care in the United States is influenced by a range of impediments to the functioning of the price mechanism which impart an upward bias to health care costs and imply efficiency losses. The paper also considers how to reform the...

Using data for a sample of developing and transition countries, this paper estimates the relationship between government spending on health care and education, and social indicators. Unlike previous studies, where social indicators are used as proxies for the unobservable health and education...

The past century has been marked by rapid advances in human welfare. People in most parts of the world are healthier and are living longer. While this trend is likely to continue, hopes are fading in some regions where progress slowed or stopped in the1990s, primarily as a result of the AIDS...

This review of Phase I of the technical assistance (TA) General Data Dissemination System (GDDS) project (2001-2006) for 15 Anglophone African countries1-funded by the U.K. Department for International Development (DFID) and executed jointly by the Fund and the World Bank-(henceforth, referred...

This report provides an assessment of the British Virgin Islands’s (BVI) compliance with the Basel Core Principle for effective banking supervision. The BVI has the preconditions for effective banking supervision. It has specific legislation governing international cooperation and mutual legal...

This Selected Issues paper examines the factors determining housing prices in the United Kingdom. Based on econometric evidence, the paper assesses whether recent housing price increases can be explained by fundamentals or whether they represent a temporary overshooting of housing prices,...

This report reviews the assessment of Jersey’s compliance with the Basel core principles for effective banking supervision based on the Core Principles. It provides a detailed assessment of the antimoney laundering and combating the financing of terrorism regime of Jersey and reviews its laws...

This Selected Issues paper for the Netherlands highlights that Dutch cost competitiveness deteriorated significantly in the years prior to 2004. The relatively poor economic performance during the new millennium contributed to these concerns generally, as did restrained export performance more...

The British Virgin Islands (BVI) has most of the essential elements for a suitable framework for financial supervision. There is a weakness with respect to onsite supervision of banking, insurance, and securities sectors; and there is currently no regular and comprehensive examination and...