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,...

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...

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,...

This paper investigates the transmission of monetary policy by private banks in Brazil during the recent easing cycle. The analysis presented uses a panel dataset with information on lending by private banks in Brazil and concludes that monetary transmission through lending volumes was not...

This paper presents a model to determine the tax effort and tax capacity of 113 countries and the main variables on which they depend. The results and the model allow a clear determination of which countries are near their tax capacity and which are some way from it, and therefore, could...

The financial crisis in the advanced countries that began in 2007 has led central bankers to adopt unconventional policy measures as policy interest rates neared the zero bound. One suggestion (Blanchard, Dell’Ariccia, and Mauro, 2010) has been to raise inflation targets to provide more...

This paper examines publicly listed Chilean firms’ performance during the 2008–09 crisis. In particular, it studies the effects from changes in external financing conditions, aggregate demand, and international trade on firms’ investment, sales, and profits, using...

The sizeable fiscal consolidation required to stabilize the debt-to-GDP ratios in several countries in the aftermath of the global crisis raises a crucial question on its feasibility. To answer this question, we rely on historical evidence from a sample of 91 adjustment episodes of countries...