Ensuring stable growth in the postcrisis world economy will require a rebalancing of economic activity in several countries. In Asia’s export-dependent economies, this entails relying more on private domestic demand as a driver of growth. While some countries need to raise consumption,...

This paper reviews the fiscal reform of the Czech Republic, its key reform measures, and structural implications. The study also focuses on key challenges and demographic pressures facing the Czech economy, and describes the analytical framework of Global Fiscal Model (GFM) with technical...

The staff report for the 2007 Article IV Consultation on Bangladesh highlights recent developments and policy discussions. Bangladesh’s growth outlook and external position remain robust, but inflation has picked up. Overall macroeconomic stability has been maintained, but fiscal...

Kuwait’s economy continued to perform strongly in 2008, although signs of weakness emerged in the second half of the year. The authorities’ key challenge in the near term is to preserve financial stability and cushion the impact of the global slowdown. Executive Directors have...

We present a simple model of petroleum exploration and development that can be applied to study the performance of alternative tax systems and identify potential distortions. Although the model is a highly simplified, it incorporates many factors and some of the key tradeoffs that would...

This paper examines the impact of thin capitalization rules that limit the tax deductibility of interest on the capital structure of the foreign affiliates of US multinationals. We construct a new data set on thin capitalization rules in 54 countries for the period 1982-2004. Using confidential...

São Tomé and Príncipe is very open and highly depends on imports resulting in high indirect tax revenue. At the same time, the production and export base are very narrow, leaving the authorities with a small domestic tax base. For these reasons, the country compares unfavorably with...

Request increase in miners' wages. - No attention, up to the present, has been paid by mine managers of big companies in the Coeur d'Alenes, to demand for a dollar increase in the daily wage of men employed. The companies usually act in concert on such matters but it is said today no conference...

Open wage rate hearing Monday. - All sides to be heard at Coulee dam--referee Schedler arrives. - Assurance that the wage rate hearing at Grand Coulee dam will be expedited in order to establish promptly the wage scale which will apply under the new contract, was given by Carl R. Schedler,...

Sidney miners take wage cut - Men employed by the Sidney mine have voluntarily accepted a 50-cent per day reduction in wages, it is reported at Wallace today, and it is possible this is only the first of the companies of the Coeur d'Alenes which will cut wages as a result of the reduction in the...