Despite the increasing interest in universal health care, little is known about the optimal way to finance, design, and implement it. This paper attempts to fill this gap by providing some general policy recommendations on this important issue. While most of the paper addresses the Eastern...

A rapidly growing empirical literature is studying the causes and consequences of bank fragility in present-day economies. The paper reviews the two basic methodologies adopted in cross-country empirical studies-the signals approach and the multivariate probability model-and their application to...

The paper proposes a theoretical argument on the nature of bank lending, based on the idea that, through commitment and monitoring, banks overcome basic informational asymmetries with borrowers. By bringing together loan commitment theories and credit rationing theories, the paper shows that,...

The paper's central theme is that where a financial crisis emerges, regional supervisors should have systems in place to effectively respond to their country-specific crises and-in the case of foreign operations and financial conglomerates-to collaborate comprehensively with other supervisory...

This paper examines the role of financial development and financial structure in explaining cross-country diffusion of information communication technology (ICT). Using panel data for 76 emerging and advanced countries for the period 1990-2003, the paper finds that credit and stock market...

The treatment of license payments in the national accounts has become increasingly important in recent years; with mobile phone licenses being auctioned for substantial values in several countries. Because the text of the System of National Accounts 1993 does not provide specific guidance on...

Conventional wisdom has it that the value-added tax is not a suitable instrument for lower-level jurisdictions (‘provinces’) in a federal system. The problems that arise when it is so used have become a serious constraint on the development of the VAT—and closer economic integration—in...

This paper provides an assessment of the poverty and social impact of replacing Ethiopia's sales tax with a value-added tax (VAT). The results indicate that this reform has not had a major adverse effect on the poorest 40 percent of the population. The VAT is progressive in its incidence, and...

The six member states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC)-Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and United Arab Emirates (UAE)-have laid out a path to a common market by 2007 and monetary union by 2010, based on economic convergence. To monitor convergence and support economic and...

Increases in German core inflation following the 2007 VAT hike were smaller than expected, leading to speculation about delayed inflationary effects. This paper argues to the contrary that price increases in advance of the VAT hike explain the small increase upon implementation. We find that...