This paper surveys the foreign exchange markets, money and secondary government security markets, and stock exchanges in 107 smaller economy countries. The underdevelopment of these markets impedes risk transfer, monetary policy, corporate financing, and the capacity to absorb capital inflows....

KEY ISSUES Context. Saudi Arabia’s economy has grown very strongly in recent years, benefitting from high oil prices and output, strong private sector activity, and government spending. It has played a systemic and stabilizing role in the global oil market. The economy has not been...

This chapter reviews developments in GDP over the past several decades. The analysis shows that accumulation of labor and capital explains the bulk of overall output growth since 1990, with changes in total factor productivity playing only a minor role. Moreover, while increases in total factor...

Saudi Arabia is the world’s largest oil exporter and has employed its spare capacity to help stabilize the global oil market, providing important support to the global economy. The associated increase in oil revenues has resulted in sharply higher fiscal and current account surpluses and...

Multilateral Consultations are a new tool of multilateral surveillance for the IMF, designed to foster action-oriented debate and policy actions on a problem of systemic or regional importance. The first multilateral consultation focused on facilitating the resolution of global imbalances while...

This Selected Issues paper and Statistical Appendix describes Palau’s financial sector, its recent performance, and developments in regulatory reform. The paper considers illustrative scenarios of possible outcomes for public spending levels and growth under different assumptions with...