International Monetary Fund imprint: 1365 books

Health care reform will be a key fiscal policy challenge in both advanced and emerging economies in coming years. In the advanced economies, the health sector has been one of the main drivers of government expenditure, accounting for about half of the rise in total spending over the past forty years....

Most of the seven major industrial countries are now experiencing significant changes in their demographic structure. A persistent pattern of declining fertility and improving life expectancy has created major segments of the population that are already relatively aged or will become so in the near...

Privatization has been a key element of structural reform in many developing and transition economies during the last decade. This paper examines the fiscal and macroeconomic issues involved in the privatization of nonfinancial public enterprises in these economies. It considers issues such as the...

Fiscal rules can help to counteract the deficits and spending biases that too often originate in the political process. Rules that constrain spending--rather than the balance--allow fiscal policy to be countercyclical. Yet the design of effective spending rules is by no means straightforward. Should...

Five years after the onset of the global financial crisis, Europe’s economy is still fragile. Notwithstanding recent positive signs amid calmer financial markets, medium-term growth is likely to remain frail owing to continuing weaknesses and vulnerabilities at the country level and in the fabric of...

Asia’s financial systems proved resilient to the shocks from the global financial crisis, and growth since then has been strong. But new challenges have emerged in the region’s economies, including demographics and aging, the need to diversify from bank-dominated systems, urbanization and infrastructure,...

This collection of papers examines IMF-supported programs over the period 1995-2000 in both middle-income and low-income countries. In order to seek insights from a comparison across different types of programs, the sections entitled"Objectives and Outcomes," "Policy Formulation and Analytical Frameworks,"...

This paper provides a detailed account of Hong Kong on the eve of its reintegration into China as a special administrative region. It analyzes recent economic development and provides a clear overview of Hong Kong's economic, financial, institutional, and political circumstances, as well a brief look...

This study reviews Albania's historical and political background, as well as economic developments in 1991. It describes the centrally planned economic system up to the onset of reform and analyzes economic performance in the 1980s.

In 1991, the Baltics, Russia and other countries of the former Soviet Union set out on the road to establishing market economies by lieberalizing prices, dismantling the instruments of central planning, and initiating a process of fundamental structural reforms. Since then these 15 countries have taken...

This paper provides an overview of the recent revenue performance in the Baltics, Russia, and other countries of the former Soviet Union, and a survey of these countries' efforts to modify tax policy in line with the needs of increasingly market-oriented economies and to increase the effectiveness...

In the Summer of 1998, the Executive Board discussed a set of three papers prepared by the staff that focused on the likey impact of EMU on selected non-EU countries. In recognition of the contribution these papers could make to the literature and discussion of EMU, the Board requested that this collection...

This book, by a staff team headed by Yusuke Horiguchi, examines U.S. economic policy and performance in the 1980s, during which the United States enjoyed its longest peacetime expansion. Notwithstanding the buoyant growth and declines in inflation, the economy experienced low savings, current account...