"Unfunded pay-as-you-go state pension schemes are financially unsustainable in Europe as elsewhere. Proponents of reform argue that, by switching to a fully funded scheme that takes advantage of the high return on assets such as equities, the solvency of the state scheme could be restored at...

This paper constructs new business cycle indices for Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Mexico based on common dynamic factors extracted from a comprehensive set of sectoral output, external data, and fiscal and financial variables spanning over a century. The constructed indices are used to derive a...

The World Economic Outlook (WEO) is a key source of forecasts of global economic conditions. It is therefore important to review the performance of these forecasts against both actual outcomes and alternative forecasts. This paper conducts a series of statistical tests to evaluate the quality of...