This volume, by Bijan B. Aghevli, Tamim Bayoumi, and Guy Meredith, is based on a seminar on structural change in Japan held in early 1997 and chaired by the IMF's First Deputy Managing Director, Stanley Fischer. Discussion of teh day-to-day management of the standard levers of fiscal and...

We use the IMF''s Global Fiscal Model to evaluate recent proposals to reform social security and the tax system in the United States. Introducing personal retirement accounts is unlikely to yield significant macroeconomic benefits unless it spurs additional fiscal consolidation to prevent a...

Since December 2008, the Federal Reserve's traditional policy instrument, the target federal funds rate, has been effectively at its lower bound of zero. In order to further ease the stance of monetary policy as the economic outlook deteriorated, the Federal Reserve purchased substantial...

South Korea undertook a number of important fiscal steps in 2020-21 to fight the COVID-19 pandemic. Key policies it adopted were common to most advanced economies, including transfers to support households, firms, and workers and increased resources for public health measures such as testing,...

COVID era inflation was driven by a unique combination of three shocks: First, a plethora of pandemic-related shifts in demand patterns and disruptions to supply caused prices of consumer durable goods to skyrocket. Second, the Ukraine war caused the largest global commodity price surge in 40...