The paper reviews the historical experience of developing countries with bond issues in international markets in order to put the recent wave of bond financing by these countries in some perspective. It examines developments in the early part of this century and during the mid-1970s and early...

The finances of the Czech pension system have deteriorated markedly in recent years and the aging population will add further strains in the future. The system is also burdened by significant distortions and disincentive effects. This paper assesses the current pay-as-you-go (PAYG) system,...

This paper examines the short- and long-run economic impact of Egypt's energy subsidy reform in July 2014 (without and without compensating transfers for the bottom 40 percent of the income distribution) and the decline in global energy prices, as well as the long-run impact of phasing out the...

Egypt is in a precarious economic situation reflecting a difficult external environment, political uncertainty, and weak economic policies. International reserves have been declining rapidly to a low level, driven by a sizeable current account deficit and large capital outflows. Large spending...

The finances of the Czech pension system have deteriorated markedly in recent years and the aging population will add fiirther strains in the future. The system is also burdened by significant distortions and disincentive effects. This paper assesses the current pay-as-you-go (PAYG) system,...

The primary purposes of this study were two-fold: i) to identify some of the key issues and challenges being faced by New Member States (NMS) in the management of their public investment programs; and ii) to identify good practice examples and persistent challenges faced by European Union (EU)...

This report concerns recent pension reforms in Europe. Over the last decade, pension reform has been a major issue on the political agenda across Europe. All European countries are profoundly affected by aging populations resulting from lower fertility and increased life expectancy. In order to...

Existing economic indicators and indexes assess economic activity but no single indicator measures the general macro-economic performance of a nation, state, or region in a methodologically simple and intuitive way. This paper proposes a simple, yet informative metric called the Economic...

The GCC countries maintain a policy of open capital accounts and a pegged (or nearly-pegged) exchange rate, thereby reducing their freedom to run an independent monetary policy. This paper shows, however, that the pass-through of policy rates to retail rates is on the low side, reflecting the...

Over the past decade policy makers in Latin America have adopted a number of macroprudential instruments to manage the procyclicality of bank credit dynamics to the private sector and contain systemic risk. Reserve requirements, in particular, have been actively employed. Despite their...