The European economic integration leads to increasing mobility of factors, thereby threatening the stability of social transfer programs. This paper investigates the possibility to achieve by means of voluntary matching grants both the optimal allocation of factors and the optimal level of...

This Occasional Paper provides an overview of the main challenges facing Hong Kong SAR as it continues to become more closely integrated with the mainland of China. Section I provides an overview of recent macroeconomic developments and the main policy issues in Hong Kong SAR. Section II...

This 2003 Article IV Consultation highlights that despite significant slowdowns in activity in some major overseas markets, New Zealand has maintained a strong pace of economic growth over the past three years. The economy’s performance reflected its enhanced flexibility, stemming from...

This Selected Issues paper for India reports that rapid growth is presenting new challenges to macroeconomic policy, although ensuring the sustainability of this growth requires broad-based fiscal and structural reforms. Higher world oil prices present risks in both the near and medium term. In...

This paper introduces a tractable capital market friction mechanism that allows a break of the parity between domestic and external interest rates and generates a gradual evolution of capital stock and other macroeconomic variables-in contrast to the instantaneous convergence found in models...

This paper evaluates the effects on the Bangladeshi economy of phasing out textile and clothing (T&C) quotas currently maintained by industrial countries. The planned abolition of the quotas under the Agreement on Textiles and Clothing in 2005 will alter the competitiveness of various exporting...

The paper analyzes the determinants of success of recent fiscal consolidations in the OECD countries as well as the short-run and long-run effects of fiscal adjustments on economic activity by looking at fourteen case studies, panel data for OECD countries, and the results of simulations using a...

This paper discusses two opposing views on global imbalances: The "traditional view", which regards the imbalances as a threat to global economic and financial stability, and the "new paradigm" view, which considers that they are the natural consequence of economic and financial globalization....