The purpose of the study is to examine Peru’s effective interest spread through accounting decompositions, financial ratio analysis, and spread regressions. The government’s financial restructuring programs accelerated the banking sector consolidation process. Robustness of...

This technical assistance report on Iceland focuses on a new organic budget law (OBL). In designing a new OBL, it is important to preserve good features of Iceland’s current legal framework for budgeting. At the same time, any new OBL should address the key weaknesses in the Financial...

Over the past two decades, wide-ranging structural reforms, supported by prudent policies, have established Mauritius as a top regional performer. The Mauritian economy recovered in 2010. Real GDP growth is estimated to have accelerated to 4 percent (3 percent in 2009), driven by strong growth...

With a modest recovery in the global economy underway, and amid rising concerns about the sharp increase in government debt in several countries, debate has increasingly focused on the need to identify and implement fiscal exit strategies. This paper reviews the medium-term plans of 25 countries...

Today’s record public debt levels in most advanced economies are not only a direct fall-out from the global crisis. Public debt had ratcheted up over many decades before, when it had been used, in most of the G-7 countries, as the ultimate shock absorber—rising in bad times but not...

This paper examines a typology of grants that are used across the world, and places these in the context of the overall constitutional and legal framework for a country. It looks at the options for grants, given the need to maintain overall macroeconomic stability, efficiency in the use of...

Argentina has committed itself to a reform of its revenue-sharing system. This paper examines this system and the issues involved in its redesign, and discusses the pros and cons of various options with a view to specifying a preferred approach.

Using the Dynamic Simulation of Income Model, we project how Social Security benefits and payroll taxes would change were Congress to enact the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform's proposal. We show benefits at several points in time and relative to pre-retirement income, a...