A common proposal designed to deal with the developing countries’ debt problem is that there be set up some kind of “international debt facility” which would buy up debt at a discount and then write down its contractual value, hence providing debt relief. There are three main parties to...

The paper surveys the major economic, financial, and administrative issues that confront social security systems in Latin America. The larger systems have contributed substantially to public sector financial disequilibria. Expenditures of the younger systems with more limited coverage could...

Developing countries with VATs typically exempt a large number of goods and services. Following a brief discussion of the rationale for exemptions, this paper presents a formula for the base of a VAT with exemptions. Two basic adjustments must be made to the base without exemptions: subtraction...

This paper is concerned with debt-equity swaps in which foreign residents are a party to the exchange (i.e., it does not deal with flight capital), and with debt forgiveness. The seemingly unrelated issues of debt-equity swaps and debt forgiveness are jointly treated in this study, because debt...

This paper reviews evidence on the impact of fuel subsidy reform on household welfare in developing countries. On average, the burden of subsidy reform is neutrally distributed across income groups; a $0.25 decrease in the per liter subsidy results in a 6 percent decrease in income for all...

This paper investigates the medium- and long-term growth effects of the global financial crises on Low-Income Countries (LICs). Using several methodological approaches, including impulse response function analysis, growth spells techniques and panel regressions, we show that external demand (ED)...

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This paper focuses mainly on official bilateral and multilateral financing for countries that have rescheduled their debts to official bilateral creditors. In contrast to the approaches taken by private lenders, official creditors have continued to provide new financing on a large scale to...

This paper reviews major issues and developments in the trade area and outlines the challenges governments face as they seek to liberalize trade in the Uruguay Round of trade negotiations and address new trade issues. In industrial countries, the reorientation of policies was most apparent in...

For the latest thinking about the international financial system, monetary policy, economic development, poverty reduction, and other critical issues, subscribe to Finance & Development (F&D). This lively quarterly magazine brings you in-depth analyses of these and other subjects by the IMF’s...