This staff report on United Kingdom’s (UK) 2013 Article IV Consultation highlights economic policies and development. The UK economy grew by about ¼ percent in 2012. Net trade reduced growth by 0.6 percentage points of GDP, the biggest drag since 2005, and well above staff projections....

After a short-lived slowdown in the immediate aftermath of the global financial crisis and a swift rebound, emerging markets (EM) are now entering a period of slower growth. In fact, growth is now lower than the post-crisis peak of 2010-11, as well as the rates seen in the decade before the...

Paraguay’s economy recently experienced particularly large output swings. Economic policies will play a critical role in raising investment by making sure that macroeconomic stability is maintained. The spillovers from the agricultural sector to the rest of the economy are limited. The...

This technical note discusses the banking system structure, performance, and medium-term challenges for Switzerland. The note discusses that the Swiss banking sector has been undergoing a substantial consolidation over the last 10 years, but retains a rich collection of institutional types...

The global financial crisis hit Denmark hard, and the recovery has been slow and unsteady. Denmark’s slow growth predates the recent economic crisis, and the economy has underperformed its regional peers. The current account remains in surplus, largely reflecting weak domestic demand...

This Selected Issues paper for Chile assesses the impact of the global financial crisis on Chilean banks. It provides a framework for analyzing government measures aimed at reducing systemic risk. The analysis suggests that Chilean banks are resilient to global and regional shocks. However, even...

This Selected Issues paper examines the household debt situation in Denmark and factors that have contributed to the high level of household debt in the country. Various factors seem to account for the size of household debt, including large pension assets, a highly developed mortgage market,...