The IMF Working Papers series is designed to make IMF staff research available to a wide audience. Almost 300 Working Papers are released each year, covering a wide range of theoretical and analytical topics, including balance of payments, monetary and fiscal issues, global liquidity, and...

As a companion piece to the Board paper on Structural Reforms and Macroeconomic Performance: Initial Considerations for the Fund, this paper presents a selection of case studies on the structural reform experiences of member countries. These papers update the Board on work since the Triennial...

The five Regional Economic Outlooks published biannually by the IMF cover Asia and Pacific, Europe, the Middle East and Central Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, and the Western Hemisphere. In each volume, recent economic developments and prospects for the region are discussed as a whole, as well as for...

Ensuring stable growth in the postcrisis world economy will require a rebalancing of economic activity in several countries. In Asia’s export-dependent economies, this entails relying more on private domestic demand as a driver of growth. While some countries need to raise consumption, several...

Over the last decade, the Eastern Caribbean Currency Union (ECCU) macroeconomic performance has deteriorated relative to the rest of the Caribbean. Tourism accounts for three-fifths of exports, and the import content of consumption and investment is high. The ECCB-operated quasi-currency board...

The Eastern Caribbean Currency Union (ECCU) countries financial system has increasingly come under stress particularly through weakly supervised nonbank and offshore financial sectors with knock-on effects to domestic banks. The staff report focuses on ECCU’s 2009 discussion on common policies...

This paper presents background on Caribbean small states as context for the main paper, 'Macroeconomic Issues in Small States and Implications for Fund Engagement.' It draws on recent analytical work presented at a conference for policy makers in September 2012, in Trinidad and Tobago. Caribbean...

Mozambique is an economic success story in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Its remarkable achievements offer valuable lessons to other low-income countries in a post-stabilization economic phase, including how they can efficiently manage a scaling up of foreign aid aimed at poverty reduction. Of...

This paper discusses the main features of Spain's recent adjustment effort and assesses its impact on the overall economic situation. It provides a brief historical background on Spain's economic development from 1960 to the early 1980s. The chapter also discusses the authorities' stance on...

The paper deals with the two parts of the short-run adjustment problem in developing countries: the improvement of the current account and the reduction of inflation, the main cause in both cases being usually a fiscal deficit. It is shown how the two parts are related. Distinctions are made...