Economic Issues List

Views & Commentaries — the IMF responds to its critics

Economic Issues Papers on a wide range of topics written in concise, nontechnical language
	November 21, 2009


1.	Title: Public Investment and Public-Private Partnerships, Economic Issues 40, June 13, 2007 Description: ... 2005, “Managing Fiscal Risks in PPPs,” in Current Issues in Fiscal ... Economic Issue No ... A government guarantee legally binds the issuing government to take on ... Date: June 13, 2007 Type: PDF Size: 198 KB
2.	Title: Integrating Poor Countries into the World Trading System: IMF Economic Issues No. 37; April 6 , 2006 Description: ... Recent research has devoted much attention to trade issues—in particular, the relationship ... This Economic Issue summarizes IMF staff findings on these topics. ... Date: April 06, 2006 Type: PDF Size: 323 KB
3.	Title: Accountability Arrangements for Financial Sector Regulators: Eva Hüpkes, Marc Quintyn, and Michael W. Taylor; Economic Issues 39; March 16, 2006 Description: ... affecting individuals or companies, such as issuing or withdrawing ... should consult frequently with supervised institutions on policy issues. ... Economic Issue No. ... Date: March 16, 2006 Type: PDF Size: 505 KB
4.	Title: Moving to a Flexible Exchange Rate: How, When, and How Fast?; Rupa Duttagupta, Gilda Fernandez, and Cem Karacadag; Economic Issues 38; January 9, 2006 Description: ... Two earlier Economic Issues on exchange rates—Economic Issue No. ... Economic Issue No. ... This implies that domestic currency will be issued only against foreign ... Date: January 09, 2006 Type: PDF Size: 133 KB
5.	Title: Preserving Financial Stability; Garry Schinasi; Economic Issues 36; September 2005 Description: ... issues written for the nonspecialist reader. They are published in six languages— English, Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian, and Spanish. Economic Issue No. ... Date: September 01, 2005 Type: PDF Size: 583 KB Note: More information about this publication, including language versions.
6.	Title: Economic Issues No. 35 - Financial Reform: What Shakes It? What ... Description: This paper studies how large a role different types of events play in triggering reform and how the type of event influences the timing of reform. Date: June 30, 2005 Type: HTML Size: 101 KB
7.	Title: Economic Issues No. 35 - Financial Reform: What Shakes It? What ... Description: This paper studies how large a role different types of events play in triggering reform and how the type of event influences the timing of reform. Date: June 30, 2005 Type: HTML Size: 101 KB
8.	Title: Economic Issues No. 34 - Can Debt Relief Boost Growth in Poor ... Description: An analysis of the debt/growth relationship in low-income countries could therefore be especially useful in assessing the effectiveness of the HIPC Initiative in enhancing growth. Date: June 01, 2005 Type: HTML Size: 44 KB
9.	Title: Economic Issues No. 34 - Can Debt Relief Boost Growth in Poor ... Description: An analysis of the debt/growth relationship in low-income countries could therefore be especially useful in assessing the effectiveness of the HIPC Initiative in enhancing growth. Date: June 01, 2005 Type: HTML Size: 44 KB
10.	Title: Economic Issues No. 33 - Educating Children in Poor Countries Description: The problem in many developing countries is that governments lack either the financial resources or the political will to meet their citizens' educational needs. In response, poor parents in some low income countries have organized and paid for their children's education themselves. It is true that school fe... Date: April 29, 2004 Type: HTML Size: 43 KB
11.	Title: Economic Issues No. 32 - Should Financial Sector Regulators Be ... Description: ... This Economic Issue is based on IMF Working Paper WP/02 ... of politicians for expansionary economic policies that ... powerful, raising serious issues of accountability ... Date: March 08, 2004 Type: HTML Size: 47 KB
12.	Title: Economic Issues No. 31 - Corporate Sector Restructuring: The Role ... Description: Large-scale corporate restructuring made necessary by a financial crisis is one of the most daunting challenges faced by economic policymakers. The government is forced to take a leading role, even if indirectly, because of the need to prioritize policy goals, address market failures, reform the legal and ta... Date: August 24, 2002 Type: HTML Size: 65 KB
13.	Title: Economic Issues No. 31 - Corporate Sector Restructuring: The Role ... Description: Large-scale corporate restructuring made necessary by a financial crisis is one of the most daunting challenges faced by economic policymakers. The government is forced to take a leading role, even if indirectly, because of the need to prioritize policy goals, address market failures, reform the legal and ta... Date: August 24, 2002 Type: HTML Size: 65 KB
14.	Title: Economic Issues No. 28--Moral Hazard: Does IMF Financing Encourage ... Description: This Economic Issue is based on IMF Working Paper WP/00/168, Does IMF Financing Result in Moral Hazard?, October 2000... Date: May 03, 2002 Type: HTML Size: 35 KB
15.	Title: Economic Issues No. 30 -- Hiding in the Shadows : The Growth of ... Description: This Economic Issue is based on IMF Working Paper 00/26, "Shadow Economies Around the World: Size, Causes, and Consequences," February 2000... Date: April 20, 2002 Type: HTML Size: 39 KB
16.	Title: Economic Issues No. 29--The Pension Puzzle: Prerequisites and ... Description: This Economic Issue draws on material originally contained in IMF Working Paper 00/139, "Reforming Pensions: Myths, Truths, and Policy Choices," August 2000... Date: April 20, 2002 Type: HTML Size: 49 KB
17.	Title: Economic Issues No. 29--The Pension Puzzle: Prerequisites and ... Description: This Economic Issue draws on material originally contained in IMF Working Paper 00/139, "Reforming Pensions: Myths, Truths, and Policy Choices," August 2000... Date: April 20, 2002 Type: HTML Size: 49 KB
18.	Title: Economic Issues No. 26--Rural Poverty in Developing Countries ... Description: This pamphlet examines how rural poverty develops, what accounts for its persistence, and what specific measures can be taken to eliminate or reduce it. Date: March 13, 2001 Type: HTML Size: 34 KB
19.	Title: Economic Issues No. 25--Controlling Pollution: Using Taxes and ... Description: This pamphlet provides a practical review of country experiences with the main focus on green taxes broadly defined. There seems to be little consensus on what constitutes an environmental tax, however. Date: March 09, 2001 Type: HTML Size: 31 KB
20.	Title: Economic Issues No. 24 -- Full Dollarization Description: This pamphlet focuses on full dollarization, or one country officially adopting the currency of another for all financial transactions, except perhaps the need for coins. Date: March 08, 2001 Type: HTML Size: 46 KB
21.	Title: Economic Issues No. 27 -- Tax Policy for Developing Countries Description: Why do we have taxes? Until someone comes up with a better idea, taxation is the only practical means of raising the revenue to finance government spending on the goods and services that most of us demand.Developing countries face formidable challenges when they attempt to establish efficient tax systems. Th... Date: March 01, 2001 Type: HTML Size: 44 KB
22.	Title: Economic Issues No. 23--Promoting Growth in Sub-Saharan Africa Description: This pamphlet presents the results of an empirical analysis of the factors affecting economic growth in sub-Saharan Africa, using data for the period 1981–97 and a sample of 32 countries. Date: October 02, 2000 Type: HTML Size: 30 KB
23.	Title: Economic Issues No. 22 -- The Challenge of Predicting Economic ... Description: The integration of financial markets around the world over the past decade has posed new challenges for policymakers. The speed with which money can be switched in and out of currencies and countries has increased with the efficiency of global communications, considerably shortening the time policymakers hav... Date: September 22, 2000 Type: HTML Size: 33 KB
24.	Title: Economic Issues No. 21--Improving Governance and Fighting ... Description: In the late 1980s and early 1990s, some 25 countries began their dramatic transformation into market-based economies by liberalizing prices, dismantling the remaining instruments of Soviet-type central planning, and starting fundamental structural economic reforms. Date: July 24, 2000 Type: HTML Size: 40 KB
25.	Title: Economic Issues No. 20 -- Job Creation: Why Some Countries Do ... Description: This paper presents the findings of a study by IMF staff that has systematically analyzed job creation over the past two decades in the industrial countries, focusing particularly on differences within Europe. Date: June 09, 2000 Type: HTML Size: 42 KB
26.	Title: Economic Issues No. 19 -- Hedge Funds: What Do We Really Know? Description: Discusses the size, number, and investment styles of hedge funds, and their interactions with global financial markets. It reviews the present state of their supervision and regulation, and assesses various suggestions for regulating them more closely, often as part of new regulatory approaches to the larger... Date: September 27, 1999 Type: HTML Size: 49 KB
27.	Title: Economic Issues No. 18 -- Privatization in Transition Countries ... Description: Addresses the potential gains and risks of open capital markets by looking at what classical economic theory suggests about the benefits of capital mobility and examining counterarguments arising from problems of incomplete information and other distortions. Date: September 06, 1999 Type: HTML Size: 38 KB
28.	Title: Economic Issues No. 17 -- Liberalizing Capital Movements: Some ... Description: Addresses the potential gains and risks of open capital markets by looking at what classical economic theory suggests about the benefits of capital mobility and examining counterarguments arising from problems of incomplete information and other distortions. Date: August 02, 1999 Type: HTML Size: 39 KB
29.	Title: Economic Issues No. 16 -- Should Equity Be a Goal of Economic ... Description: Equity issues are especially knotty because they are inextricably intertwined with social values. Nonetheless, economic policymakers are devoting greater attention to them. Date: January 22, 1999 Type: HTML Size: 32 KB
30.	Title: Economic Issues No. 15 -- Inflation Targeting as a Framework for ... Description: Explains the requirements for putting such a policy in place, reviews the experience of the seven industrial countries that have tried it and discusses whether inflation targeting has a wider applicability to developing countries... Date: October 02, 1998 Type: HTML Size: 42 KB
31.	Title: Economic Issues No. 14 -- Lessons from Systemic Bank Restructuring Description: This Economic Issue explains which practices lead to successful restructuring. It then relates illustrative cases of several countries' restructurings. Date: May 15, 1998 Type: HTML Size: 53 KB
32.	Title: Economic Issues No. 13 -- Fixed or Flexible?--Getting the Exchange ... Description: This paper examines the recent evolution of exchange rate policies in the developing world. It looks at why so many countries have made the transition from fixed or pegged exchange rates to managed floating or independently floating currencies. It discusses how economies perform under different exchange rate... Date: April 17, 1998 Type: HTML Size: 45 KB
33.	Title: Economic Issues No. 12 Roads to Nowhere: How Corruption in Public ... Description: In some countries corrupt politicians appear to choose investment projects not on the basis of their intrinsic economic worth, but on the opportunity for bribes and kickbacks these projects present. This paper contends that such corruption increases the number of capital projects undertaken and tends to enla... Date: March 31, 1998 Type: HTML Size: 30 KB
34.	Title: Economic Issues 10 -- Deindustrialization -- Its Causes and ... Description: This paper maintains that deindustrialization is primarily a feature of successful economic development and that North-South trade has very little to do with it. Date: September 29, 1997 Type: HTML Size: 32 KB
35.	Title: Economic Issues 11--Does Globalization Lower Wages and Export Jobs ... Description: There is no doubt that globalization has coincided with higher unemployment among the less skilled and with widening income inequality. But did it cause these phenomena, as many claim, or should we look to other factors, such as advances in technology?... Date: September 27, 1997 Type: HTML Size: 34 KB
36.	Title: Economic Issues No. 9--Protecting Bank Deposits Description: Although the special importance of banks to a country’s economy might seem to make the insurance of their deposits unquestionably worthwhile, the reality is not that simple. Date: September 25, 1997 Type: HTML Size: 35 KB
37.	Title: Economic Issues 8 -- Why Is China Growing So Fast? Description: Although capital accumulation--the growth in the country's stock of capital assets, such as new factories, manufacturing machinery, and communications systems--was important, as were the number of Chinese workers, a sharp, sustained increase in productivity was the driving force behind the economic boom. Date: June 15, 1997 Type: HTML Size: 27 KB
38.	Title: Economic Issues 8 -- Why Is China Growing So Fast? Description: Although capital accumulation--the growth in the country's stock of capital assets, such as new factories, manufacturing machinery, and communications systems--was important, as were the number of Chinese workers, a sharp, sustained increase in productivity was the driving force behind the economic boom. Date: June 15, 1997 Type: HTML Size: 27 KB
39.	Title: Economic Issues 7--Sterilizing Capital Inflows Description: Surging capital inflows can be something of a double-edged sword, inflicting rather less welcome and destabilizing side effects, including a tendency for the local currency to gain in value, undermining the competitiveness of export industries. Date: March 24, 1997 Type: HTML Size: 42 KB
40.	Title: Economic Issues No. 6 -- Why Worry About Corruption? Description: This paper focuses exclusively on corrupt public practices--illegal activities that reduce the economic efficiency of governments. It does not address private corruption, such as that practiced on individuals and private enterprises by organized crime. Date: February 24, 1997 Type: HTML Size: 34 KB
41.	Title: Economic Issues No. 6 -- Why Worry About Corruption? Description: This paper focuses exclusively on corrupt public practices--illegal activities that reduce the economic efficiency of governments. It does not address private corruption, such as that practiced on individuals and private enterprises by organized crime. Date: February 24, 1997 Type: HTML Size: 34 KB
42.	Title: Economic Issues No.4--Fiscal Reforms That Work Description: Budget deficits have soared in the industrial countries over the past 20 years, and most countries are faced with the challenge of bringing them back to earth. This is not easy. Electorates seem unwilling to pay more taxes, and according to traditional Keynesian theory, reducing government expenditures can l... Date: January 06, 1997 Type: HTML Size: 33 KB
43.	Title: Economic Issues No. 5--Transformations to Open Market Operations Description: With more countries seeking to deregulate and unleash the potential of market forces, many policymakers and central bankers are grappling with ways to realize the full benefits of open market operations. This paper compares the benefits of open market operations with other methods of monetary control and ana... Date: January 02, 1997 Type: HTML Size: 46 KB
44.	Title: Economic Issues 3--Confronting Budget Deficits Description: The phenomenon of substantial peacetime budget deficits over the past 20 years has been traced to the burden of entitlements, a slowdown in economic productivity, and demographic and macroeconomic shifts in the industrial countries. Though smaller and structurally different, deficits in developing countries... Date: September 26, 1996 Type: HTML Size: 45 KB
45.	Title: Economic Issues 1 -- Growth in East Asia Description: The spectacular growth of many economies in East Asia over the past 30 years has amazed the economics profession, which inevitably refers to the success of the so-called Four Tigers of the region (Hong Kong, Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan Province of China) as miraculous. This paper critically reviews the reas... Date: September 12, 1996 Type: HTML Size: 52 KB
46.	Title: Economic Issues 2--Does the Exchange Rate Regime Matter for ... Description: Although the theoretical relationships are ambiguous, evidence suggests a strong link between the choice of the exchange rate regime and economic performance. The paper argues that adopting a pegged exchange rate can lead to lower inflation, but also to slower growth in productivity. It finds that on average... Date: September 12, 1996 Type: HTML Size: 33 KB