Japan’s weak economic performance in the 1990s has had implications not only for its own people, but for the world economy more generally, given Japan’s importance as a trading partner and supplier of capital. Therefore, it is essential that Japan unlock its growth potential. The IMF has...

This Selected Issues paper and Statistical Appendix constructs an index of human capital for the Spanish labor force over 1977–97, and projects it over the next decade on the basis of likely demographic developments. The methodology by which the index is constructed considers both educational...

This paper assesses the usefulness of summary measures of fiscal sustainability for the purpose of multilateral surveillance. An overview of the main conceptual issues is first presented. Next, an assessment is made of the strengths and weaknesses of the summary measures in the context of their...

This paper presents a methodology to analyze the responsiveness of fiscal sustainability to the “endogenous fiscal discipline” that will be strengthened by the EMU. This discipline arises in response to the harmonization of tax systems, the loss of control of current and prospective money...

The Indonesian economy proved resilient during the global financial crisis, and has since continued to grow at a robust rate. Increases in both foreign and domestic investment are expected to offset lower growth contributions from net exports as import demand rises. A key risk is deterioration...

The global crisis left Albania fairly unscathed and ushered in the needed economic rebalancing. The policy framework has been challenged in the post-crisis environment significant headwinds. Despite improvement, external imbalances remain elevated. Fiscal consolidation in terms of a more...

PREFACE At the request of the Malian Ministry of Finance, a technical assistance mission visited Bamako during August 12–21, 2013. The purpose of the mission was to identify issues and options that need to be considered when adopting an automatic petroleum product pricing mechanism. The...

It has been shown that under perfect competition and a Cobb-Douglas production function, a basic real business cycle model may exhibit indeterminacy and sunspot fluctuations when income tax rates are determined by a balanced-budget rule. This paper introduces in an otherwise standard real...

KEY ISSUES Context: The current account is worsening, coinciding with peak debt service, limited market access, and low reserves. Although the authorities have taken ad hoc measures to curb acute exchange rate pressures during the summer, a stronger policy response is urgently needed to reduce...

China weathered the global financial crisis better than most, thanks to a large and timely stimulus. This stimulus, however, was mainly in the form of off-budget infrastructure spending and thus not visible in the headline fiscal data. We construct a time series for the augmented fiscal deficit...