This paper seeks to draw lessons from the IMF’s experience in handling financial crises around the globe over the past ten years that are relevant to the challenges faced by countries in Latin America, especially in the wake of the recent crisis in Argentina. Experience suggests that...

This paper-consisting of a regional study and seven country studies-reviews the state of domestic public debt markets in Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Panama as at end-2005. Although they account for the lion's share of capital markets, regional...

Russia dramatically reduced its higher rates of personal income tax (PIT) in 2001 establishing a single marginal rate at the low level of 13 percent. In the following year, real revenue from the PIT actually increased by about 26 percent. This 'flat tax' experience has attracted much attention...

The effects of taxation on the general price level have traditionally been regarded as reflecting monetary policy, rather than fiscal factors. This view abstracted from the possible endogeneity of monetary expansion with respect to tax hikes, and from the effects which taxation may have on the...

In the context of the current tax policy debate in the United States, this paper reviews and discusses some of the main recurrent themes, as well as some of the most important tax reform proposals put forward over the past two decades. It finds that although there seems to be widespread...

The main tasks of central banks are to secure price and financial stability. These objectives can, in times of crises, conflict with one another, and the central bank may have to renounce one of them in order to secure the other. In a monetary union, this trade-off can be exacerbated by the...

The paper discusses options available to tax mineral extraction projects particularly in developing countries. A desirable government share of the economic rent generated from mineral extraction can be achieved through different tax and non-tax instruments. This gives some room to design a...

Global economic integration intensified tax competition and raised concerns about the resulting "race to the bottom", which could undermine public investment and social spending. The aim of this paper is to test predictions that (i) there is interdependence in CIT rate setting in Eastern Europe...

This paper analyzes developments in non-oil tax policy, administration, and revenues in Azerbaijan, and suggests measures for further improvement. The main finding is that Azerbaijan's non-oil tax revenues increased significantly as a share of non-oil GDP in the last five years, but remain below...

This paper presents estimates of the size of the shadow economy in 76 developing, transition, and OECD countries, which are derived by combining figures from different estimation methods. We describe and discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the different estimation methods. We find that the...