This paper examines the role of international technical assistance in building the institutions critical to the success of market reform in the Transition Economies. While there have been many successful grass roots projects aimed at helping individual firms or associations compete in the...

In this paper we address the two following questions: (1) what are the major sources of real exchange rate fluctuations in developing countries? (2) do economic policy makers have room to face possible real exchange rate fluctuations? To answer these questions, we estimate a structural VAR model...

A pension plan administrator promises certain benefits in the future in exchange for labor today. In order to budget for this expense and create more security for the participant, the administrator uses a pension cost method. Each cost method assigns a portion of the future liability to the...

Once an integral component of company-sponsored compensation schemes in many Western economies, private defined benefit (DB) pensions are in decline. For many, DB schemes (and their related healthcare liabilities, depending on the jurisdiction) have hobbled the financial well being of plan...

Pension reform is one of the biggest challenges facing national governments. How toreform the old pay-as-you-go (PAYG) systems is still under hot debate; one of themost influential funded pension schemes is designed by the World Bank. In thesecond chapter of this paper, we first review the...

China is currently in the process of developing the largest pension system in the world and it is doing this in the context of profound economic reform and demographic transformation. The central government has followed a step-by-step approach to set up a system that is capable of accommodating...