Robust GDP growth, declining unemployment, low and stable inflation, and a string of fiscal and current account surpluses -- it's a record to be envied. These outcomes in Canada owe much to sound macroeconomic policies, as well as to a favorable external environment. This book focuses on these...

This Selected Issues paper examines the long-term issues with pension expenditures in the Netherlands. The paper highlights that the public pension for a single person is equal to 70 percent of the (statutory) minimum wage. The minimum wage and public pensions thus move in lock-step; they are...

This Selected Issues paper of the United Kingdom analyzes the official projections of public pension spending and risks, as well as the strategy to increase private pension provision. It provides a comparison of stylized facts regarding business cycle developments in the three economies, and an...

The macroeconomic implications of a pension reform that substitutes a high-return fully-funded system for a low-return pay-as-you-go system are discussed in an overlapping generations, neoclassical growth model. With forward-looking individuals, a debt-financed reform worsens the current...

Pension reform is a key policy challenge in Russia. This paper examines how pension spending could increase in Russia in the absence of reforms, quantifies the impact of some recent proposals, and suggests some alternatives that would ensure public pension benefits - relative to wages - not fall...

This Selected Issues paper explores the economic consequences of aging and its impact on long-term fiscal sustainability for Cyprus. The study analyzes the potential macroeconomic impact of different approaches to deal with the fiscal costs of aging. It goes beyond a simple quantification of the...

This Selected Issues paper on Luxembourg reports that exemplary high growth rates and prudent fiscal policies provided the financial basis for the welfare system. Social expenditures in per capita terms, even adjusted for the large number of cross-border workers, rank highest among European...

Lucas (2004) asserts that "Of the tendencies that are harmful to sound economics, the most seductive, and in my opinion the most poisonous, is to focus on questions of distribution... The potential for improving the lives of poor people by finding different ways of distributing current...