"This volume provides the most comprehensive estimates of worldwide energy subsidies currently available, drawing on data from 176 countries in the areas of petroleum products, natural gas, coal, and electricity. It lays out an analysis of "how to do" energy subsidy reform, drawing on insights...

Energy subsidies have wide-ranging economic consequences. While aimed at protecting consumers, subsidies aggravate fiscal imbalances, crowd-out priority public spending, and depress private investment, including in the energy sector. Subsidies also distort resource allocation by encouraging...

This supplement presents country case studies reviewing energy subsidy reform experiences, which are the basis for the reform lessons identified in the main paper. The selection of countries for the case studies reflects the availability of data and of previously documented evidence on...

This Selected Background Issues paper on Switzerland reviews a few monetary and exchange rate issues, including questions related to the monetary policy framework and the assessment of recent monetary conditions and exchange rate developments. The paper examines the Swiss savings and investment...

This paper describes economic developments in Switzerland during the 1990s. Between 1990 and 1993, real GDP fell by a cumulative 11⁄4 percent. The tightening of monetary policy in response to rising inflation in the late 1980s induced a contraction in domestic demand that sent the economy into...

This Selected Issues paper and Statistical Appendix assesses Switzerland’s recent real GDP performance in terms of underlying movements in potential output and the cyclical output gap. The paper highlights that Swiss real GDP has been stagnant since 1990, after expanding at an average rate of...

This paper reviews economic developments in Switzerland during 1990–95. In the early 1990s, Switzerland experienced an unusually long recession, which bottomed out in the middle of 1993. Since then, the economy has returned to positive growth, with the main impulses coming from commodity...

This Selected Issues paper and Statistical Appendix evaluates Switzerland’s long-term growth and productivity performance. It analyzes the behavior of Swiss fiscal policy over the business cycle and takes a fresh look at the nature of the tradeoff between inflation and economic activity in...

This Selected Issues paper and Statistical Appendix compares two alternative time series approaches to analyzing Switzerland’s recent business cycle experience: first, the traditional “smooth-trend-plus-cycle approach,” which envisages observed output growth as fluctuating around a...

Although progress has been made in strengthening the Swiss economy, systemic risks posed by large banks as well as revisions to the macroprudential framework are still in train. The authorities welcomed the too-big-to-fail (TBTF) legislation and intervention of the Swiss National Bank (SNB) on...