This paper discusses that from shifting demographics to climate change, Southeast Asia confronts a host of challenges. Summoning them will require both resilience and flexibility. Advances in artificial intelligence, including robotics, together with innovations such as 3-D printing and new...

This note aims to inform governments on how to account for tax expenditures and use that information in fiscal management. The emphasis is on developing and emerging market economies, where the use of such accounts is in its infancy because of data constraints, insufficient human and financial...

This guidance note highlights the unique economic characteristics and constraints facing small developing states. It provides operational guidance on Fund engagement with such countries, including on how small state characteristics might shape Fund surveillance and financial support, program...

This paper is the fourth in a series that examines macroeconomic developments and prospects in Low Income Developing Countries (LIDCs). LIDCs are Fund member countries where gross national income (GNI) per capita lies below a threshold level and where external financial linkages and...

The Fund is adapting its framework for providing support to low-income countries (LICs) amid rising vulnerabilities. Despite a global economic upswing, many LICs continue to face difficult fiscal and external positions, aggravated by increasing debt levels and natural disasters in many...

This note provides operational guidance to staff on how to engage on social safeguard issues with low-income countries in both program and surveillance contexts. The note is not intended as a comprehensive guide, and should be used in conjunction with other operational guidance notes, such as...

The Fund is facing strong demand for financing from low-income countries (LICs). Commodity price shocks and loose fiscal policies have contributed to rising debt levels and financing needs in many countries. Several developing states, especially smaller ones, are also increasingly vulnerable to...

Trade integration can play a much larger role in boosting shared prosperity. The current focus on trade tensions threatens to obscure the great untapped benefits possible from further trade reform. The opportunities provided by information technology and other fundamental changes in the global...

Capacity development (CD) is one of the Fund's three core activities and has grown in importance in recent years. It supports member countries' efforts to build the institutions and capacity necessary to formulate and implement sound economic policies, thereby complementing the Fund's...

This issue of Finance and Development focuses on dark web of secret transactions that enable tax evasion and avoidance, money laundering, illicit financial flows, and corruption. Demands on government resources are building-to boost growth in some advanced economies, build infrastructure in...