This paper provides an overview of efforts in the Baltic countries to reform their pension systems, and examines the choices facing these countries in their continued reform efforts. Early reforms were aimed at correcting the flaws of the inherited Soviet system and, in particular, at shoring up...

Oil and gas production in Azerbaijan were projected to increase sharply in 2005 and 2006, respectively, reaching peaks of 1.3 million barrels a day in 2009 and 20 billion cubic meters a year in 2010. Although expected revenues over the next 20 years will be substantial, they are projected to...

Oil and gas production in Azerbaijan were projected to increase sharply in 2005 and 2006, respectively, reaching peaks of 1.3 million barrels a day in 2009 and 20 billion cubic meters a year in 2010. Although expected revenues over the next 20 years will be substantial, they are projected to...

Tanzania''s real effective exchange rate (REER) has depreciated sharply since end-2000, reversing the appreciation that took place in the second half of the 1990s. Single-country and panel data estimates, and the external sustainability approach, suggest that Tanzania''s REER is currently...

Using data for advanced economies, this paper investigates whether factors identified in the theoretical and empirical literature explain the effectiveness of fiscal policy in responding to recessions. The results are informative about the fiscal response to recessions but provide only a partial...

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...

We develop an early-warning model of sovereign debt crises. A country is defined to be in a debt crisis if it is classified as being in default by Standard & Poor''s, or if it has access to nonconcessional IMF financing in excess of 100 percent of quota. By means of logit and binary recursive...