Reform of Lebanon's pension system is indispensable. The country already faces fiscal sustainability risks, which will be compounded in the future by significantly higher pensionrelated spending and liabilities, mainly reflecting adverse demographics. In addition to sustainability issues, the...

Macroeconomic analysis in Lebanon presents a distinct challenge. For example, long delays in the publication of GDP data mean that our analysis often relies on proxy variables, and resembles an extended version of the 'nowcasting' challenge familiar to many central banks. Addressing this...

This paper seeks to understand how interest rates are formed in Lebanon, by focusing on the pass-through from benchmark rates, prevailing liquidity conditions, and the main characteristics of the Lebanese economy, notably its open capital account, fixed exchange rate, high government borrowing...

This paper applies a simple probabilistic approach to debt sustainability analysis to the case of Lebanon. The paper derives ""fan charts"" to depict the probability distribution of the government debt to GDP ratio under a medium-term adjustment scenario, as a result of shocks to GDP growth and...

This paper addresses the issue of the appropriate exchange rate regimes for Jordan and Lebanon in the context of the literature on optimum currency areas and the arguments concerning the use of the exchange rate as a nominal anchor for the economy. It presents some empirical results on the...

Lebanon is expected to have gas resources in its Mediterranean basin, and these could turn the country into a natural gas producer over the next decade. Lebanon’s economy and institutions will thus need to adapt to the challenges and opportunities that such change will bring. In this paper, we...

The exchange rate for the Lebanese pound experienced a protracted period of depreciation from end-1982 to November 1987, followed by a marked appreciation over the following six months. This paper investigates the competing hypotheses that the exchange rate over these two periods was driven by a...

The IMF Working Papers series is designed to make IMF staff research available to a wide audience. Almost 300 Working Papers are released each year, covering a wide range of theoretical and analytical topics, including balance of payments, monetary and fiscal issues, global liquidity, and...