Public consumption has declined from 12 percent of GDP in 1996 to 10.8 percent in 1999 owing to fiscal consolidation: wage increases are moderate, and other current expenditures have grown slowly. Conversely, private consumption has increased from 75.2 percent of GDP in 1996 to 76.9 percent in...

This Detailed Assessment of the Observance of International Association of Insurance Supervisors (IAIS) Insurance Core Principles for Portugal highlights the market analysis of the insurance market. Investment in domestic government bonds has decreased and is outweighed by nondomestic government...

Interest rates in China comprise a mix of both market determined interest rates (interbank rates and bond yields), and regulated interest rates (lending and deposit rates), reflecting China''s gradual process of interest rate liberalization. We argue, using a theoretical model and empirical...

This paper gauges the potential effects on employment of rebalancing China''s exportoriented growth model toward domestic demand, particularly private consumption. Shifting to a private consumption-led growth likely means more demand for existing and new services as well as reorienting the...

This paper uses VAR models to examine the magnitude and sources of growth spillovers to the Baltics from key trading partners, as well asfrom the real effective exchange rate (REER). Our results show there are significant cross-country spillovers to the Baltics with those from the EU outweighing...

This paper presents a model for Inflation Targeting under imperfect policy credibility. It modifies the conventional model in three ways: an endogenous policy credibility process, by which monetary policy can gain or lose credibility over time; non-linearities in the inflation equation and in the...

This is the fourth of a series of papers that are being written as part of a larger project to estimate a small quarterly Global Projection Model (GPM). The GPM project is designed to improve the toolkit to which economists have access for studying both own-country and cross-country linkages. In...

Recent economic performance in Yemen has been mixed. A sharp decline in oil production, coupled with inflexible government expenditure and only marginal improvement in the tax-to-GDP ratio led to an overall fiscal deficit of 5.8 percent in 2007. Executive Directors have noted that Yemen’s...

Following an extended period of strong economic performance, Vietnam is facing considerable challenges. Growth moderated to 6.2 percent in 2008. Rapid credit growth fueled by massive capital inflows, coupled with a surge in commodity prices, led to high inflation and large trade deficits in the...