With much healthcare publicly funded, Hong Kong's rapidly aging population will significant raise fiscal pressure over coming decades. We ask what the implications are of meeting these costs by public funding, or private funding voluntarily or through mandates. Our simulations suggest that...

The Australian banking system, which holds approximately half of total financial systems assets, and is dominated by four major banks, is sound with high earnings, high asset growth, and low levels of problem assets. Stress tests did not reveal near-term stability concerns, suggesting the...

This report focuses on the effectiveness of the Japanese Financial Supervisory Authority (FSA) and the Bank of Japan in supervising and regulating the Japanese financial system during the March 2011 earthquake. The report also highlights Japan’s compliance with the Basel Core Principles...

Most banks in Paraguay appear resilient to shocks, although the exposure to large borrowers is high. The mission strongly recommends the adoption of measures that would moderate credit growth and induce financial institutions to build cushions that can protect them and their clients from a...

Based on the economic developments and policies of Rwanda, the staff’s report was prepared. The rising global food and fuel prices have begun to elevate inflationary shares. The authorities are streamlining expenditures and introducing further reforms in revenue administration and public...

In recent years, the IMF has released a growing number of reports and other documents covering economic and financial developments and trends in member countries. Each report, prepared by a staff team after discussions with government officials, is published at the option of the member country.

The causes of the global financial crisis were multi-faceted but revealed still unresolved weaknesses in national and international financial oversight and resolution frameworks. In particular, many governments in the crisis-hit countries had to provide unprecedented levels of support to contain...

This paper formulates a novel modeling framework that delivers: (a) forecasts of indicators of systemic real risk and systemic financial risk based on density forecasts of indicators of real activity and financial health; (b) stress-tests as measures of the dynamics of responses of systemic risk...

The financial crisis has prompted a reconsideration of the taxation of financial institutions, with practice outstripping principle: France, Germany, the United Kingdom and several other European countries have now introduced some form of bank tax, and the U.S. administration has revived its own...

When a country's banking system becomes more linked to the global banking network, does that system get more or less prone to a banking crisis? Using model simulations and econometric estimates based on a world-wide dataset, we find an M-shaped relationship between financial stability of a...