This Selected Issues paper reviews developments in health care spending in France and discusses the recent measures to improve the functioning of the system and contain costs. It argues that by addressing many of the issues that had bedeviled past reforms, the new measures offer a reasonable...

This Selected Issues paper addresses the question of what policy changes in France are needed under European Monetary Union (EMU), as regards the role of fiscal policy in stabilizing the economy. The fiscal strategy over the past two and a half decades is reviewed, and, against this background,...

This Selected Issues paper presents a background and recent policy developments for Singapore’s financial sector. The paper highlights that in 1968, important tax and regulatory incentives were introduced to attract foreign investment in the financial sector and boost financial sector...

Output has rebounded strongly and is now above the pre-crisis level in Russia. Inflation pressure stemming from the ruble depreciation has been reigned in and inflation has been brought down. The paper contains a detailed description of developments in the enlarged government budget, including...

Singapore’s economic growth has been heavily dependent on factor accumulation during the past three decades. Attempts to gauge productivity growth in Singapore and other East Asian countries has led to the widely publicized debate on whether the East Asian “miracle” was driven by factor...

This Selected Issues paper for the Russian Federation discusses existing empirical efforts to measure the determinants of cross-country financial integration. Empirical studies that have adopted the gravity-model framework have found that it is generally successful in explaining bilateral...

This paper presents an overview of the different methodologies that can be used to measure the amount of available slack in an economy. A comparison of these alternatives reveals that the evolution of the Nairu is crucial for understanding recent cyclical developments in the French economy. A...