Limited fiscal space limits Djibouti's ability to meet the Millennium Development Goals and improve the living conditions of its population. Djibouti's fiscal structure is unique in that almost 70 percent of government revenue is denominated in foreign currency (import taxes, foreign aid grants,...

A long empirical literature has examined the idea that, in the absence of hedging mechanisms, currency risk should have an adverse effect on the export volumes of risk averse exporters. But there are no clear conclusions from this literature, and the current consensus seems to be that there is...

There is a renewed debate on the role of exchange rate policies as an industrial policy tool in both academic and policy circles. Policy practitioners usually examine real exchange rate misalignments to monitor the behavior of this key relative price and, if possible, exploit distortions in the...

This paper argues that it is important to take into account unfunded public pension liabilities as part of an assessment of the overall fiscal situation, including the fiscal positions of pension schemes pre and post reforms. It examines the concept of the implicit pension debt (IPD) and...

This report reviews defined contribution pension return guarantees typically made by governments in connection with pension privatizations. Finance theory related to the pricing of options provides a unifying framework for evaluating the cost of these guarantees. The report considers two types...

Public pension programmes in Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries are difficulties. With aging populations, and declining participation of working age men in paid work, existing pension arrangements are likely to be unsustainable in the future in many of the...

The pension reform in Kazakhstan was instituted to remove a deteriorating, and costly pay-as-you-go (PAYGO) system with limited liabilities, a relatively low worker to pensioner ratio, and accumulating pension arrears. Analysis was conducted to assess whether the economy could sustain a radical...

Population ageing will impose a significant burden on European fiscal balances, in particular through pay-as-you-go pension systems. This study presents an independent estimate of this burden for the euro area, and quantifies the impact of two reform scenarios. Based on widely used, but...

This paper considers the determinants of exports of modern services and traditional services. It considers the growth of export volumes as well as export surges, that is, the periods of rapid sustained export growth. It asks whether the determinants of export growth rates and export surges...

The paper is about the art of exchange rate management by central banks. It begins by reviewing the diversity of objectives and practices of central bank intervention in the foreign exchange market. Central banks typically exercise discretion in determining when and to what extent to intervene....