Financial authorities face a number of key challenges, including maintaining financial stability; ensuring long-term finance for stable economic growth; promoting greater access to financial services for both households and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs); and fostering a competitive financial industry. Access to finance for SMEs is particularly important, given their large shares in economic activity and employment in Asian economies. Striking the appropriate balance in achieving these objectives through financial supervision and regulation is an important policy issue for financial regulators. This book is the record of a joint conference in 2014 organized by the Asian Development Bank Institute; Financial Services Agency, Japan; and International Monetary Fund Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific on the topic of financial system stability, regulation, and financial inclusion. Participants included noted scholars, policymakers, and financial industrial participants from Asia. ADB Institute The ADB Institute, located in Tokyo, is the think tank of the Asian Development Bank. Its mission is to identify effective development strategies and improve development management in ADB's developing member countries. Financial Services Agency, Japan The Financial Services Agency, Japan is responsible for ensuring the stability of Japan's financial system, the protection of depositors, insurance policyholders and securities investors, and smooth finance through such measures as planning and policymaking. International Monetary Fund Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific The International Monetary Fund Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific contributes to economic surveillance and research, leads the IMF's involvement in regional cooperation, manages regional capacity building programs, and promotes the understanding and two-way dialogue of the IMF in the region.

Financial authorities face a number of key challenges, including maintaining financial stability; ensuring long-term finance for stable economic growth; promoting greater access to financial services for both households and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs); and fostering a competitive financial industry. Access to finance for SMEs is particularly important, given their large shares in economic activity and employment in Asian economies. Striking the appropriate balance in achieving these objectives through financial supervision and regulation is an important policy issue for financial regulators. This book is the record of a joint conference in 2014 organized by the Asian Development Bank Institute; Financial Services Agency, Japan; and International Monetary Fund Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific on the topic of financial system stability, regulation, and financial inclusion. Participants included noted scholars, policymakers, and financial industrial participants from Asia.   ADB Institute The ADB Institute, located in Tokyo, is the think tank of the Asian Development Bank. Its mission is to identify effective development strategies and improve development management in ADB’s developing member countries.   Financial Services Agency, Japan The Financial Services Agency, Japan is responsible for ensuring the stability of Japan’s financial system, the protection of depositors, insurance policyholders and securities investors, and smooth finance through such measures as planning and policymaking.   International Monetary Fund Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific The International Monetary Fund Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific contributes to economic surveillance and research, leads the IMF’s involvement in regional cooperation, manages regional capacity building programs, and promotes the understanding and two-way dialogue of the IMF in the region.

The growing interest in intergovernmental fiscal relations has been in line with a growing world-wide trend towards fiscal decentralization. This book presents a series of essays on the principal theoretical and institutional aspects of intergovernmental fiscal relations.

The pandemic continues to spread in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), but economic activity is picking up. After a deep contraction in April, activity started recovering in May, as lockdowns were gradually eased, consumers and firms adapted to social distancing, some countries introduced sizable policy support, and global activity strengthened.

After strong growth in 2017 and early 2018, global economic activity slowed notably in the second half of last year, reflecting a confluence of factors affecting major economies. China's growth declined following a combination of needed regulatory tightening to rein in shadow banking and an increase in trade tensions with the United States. The euro area economy lost more momentum than expected as consumer and business confidence weakened and car production in Germany was disrupted by the introduction of new emission standards; investment dropped in Italy as sovereign spreads widened; and external demand, especially from emerging Asia, softened. Elsewhere, natural disasters hurt activity in Japan. Trade tensions increasingly took a toll on business confidence and, so, financial market sentiment worsened, with financial conditions tightening for vulnerable emerging markets in the spring of 2018 and then in advanced economies later in the year, weighing on global demand. Conditions have eased in 2019 as the US Federal Reserve signalled a more accommodative monetary policy stance and markets became more optimistic about a US-China trade deal, but they remain slightly more restrictive than in the fall.

Energy taxes can produce substantial environmental and revenue benefits and are an important component of countries' fiscal systems. Although the principle that these taxes should reflect global warming, air pollution, road congestion, and other adverse environmental impacts of energy use is well established, there has been little previous work providing guidance on how countries can put this principle into practice. This book develops a practical methodology, and associated tools, to show how the major environmental damages from energy can be quantified for different countries and used to design the efficient set of energy taxes. The results, which are illustrated for more than 150 countries, suggest there is pervasive mispricing of energy across developed and developing countries alike with much at stake in policy reform. At a global level, implementing efficient energy prices would reduce carbon emissions by an estimated 23 percent and fossil-fuel air pollution deaths by 63 percent, while raising revenues (badly needed for fiscal consolidation and reducing other burdensome taxes) averaging 2.6 percent of GDP.

Assesses global financial markets and addresses emerging market financing in a global context. The Global Financial Stability Report focuses on relevant contemporary issues and regularly contains special features on structural or systemic issues that are critical to international financial stability. The discussion aims to deepen understanding of global capital flows as a critical engine of world economic growth.

After publishing Who's the Old Broad at the Bar? in 2010 and Funkytown in 2011, I knew a third book of essays was in the cards. There was more to say. And since life is a great mix of the sad and sweet, I hope to have captured more incidents from my life with some humor and humility. "The road that is built in hope is more pleasant to the traveler than the road built in despair, even though they both lead to the same destination."

The yearbook presents annual data covering 12 years for countries appearing in the monthly issues of IFS. There are some additional time series in country tables and some additional tables of area and world aggregates. The International Financial Statistics Country Notes presents, in two sections, brief information on the data published in International Financial Statistics. Country Notes is designed to be a companion volume to IFS: the monthly print edition, the Yearbook, the CD-ROM, and the Internet version.

This accompanying document to the Guidelines for Public Debt Management, which the IMF and the World Bank co-published in 2001, contains sample case studies that illustrate how a range of countries from around the world and at different stages of economic and financial development are developing their debt management capacity in a manner consistent with the guidelines. The experience of these countries is discussed in this publication, and should offer some useful and practical suggestions to other countries, as they strive to build their own capacity in public debt management.

These guidelines assist policymakers at all levels in considering reforms to strengthen the quality of their public debt management and reduce their countries' vulnerability to international financial shocks. Vulnerability is often greater for smaller and emerging market countries because their economies may be less diversified, have a smaller base of domestic financial savings and less-developed financial systems, and be more susceptible to financial contagion through the relative magnitudes of capital flows. As a result, these guidelines should be considered within a broader context of the factors and forces affecting a government's liquidity more generally and the management of its balance sheet.

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused dramatic loss of human life and major damage to the European economy, but thanks to an exceptionally strong policy response, potentially devastating outcomes have been avoided

The Global Financial Stability Report provides an assessment of the global financial system and markets, and addresses emerging market financing in a global context. It focuses on current market conditions, highlighting systemic issues that could pose a risk to financial stability and sustained market access by emerging market borrowers. The Report draws out the financial ramifications of economic imbalances highlighted by the IMF's World Economic Outlook. It contains, as special features, analytical chapters or essays on structural or systemic issues relevant to international financial stability.

The IMF's Fiscal Transparency Code is the international standard for disclosure of information about public finances and is the centerpiece of the global architecture on fiscal transparency. The Fiscal Transparency Handbook (2018) provides detailed guidance on the implementation of the new Fiscal Transparency Code, which was approved by the IMF Board in 2014. It explains why each principle of the Code is important and describes current trends in implementation of the principles, noting relevant international standards as well. Selected country examples are also provided

The demand for high quality detailed public finance statistics covering a globally representative sample of countries has increased dramatically during the recent financial crisis. Due to the complexity of public finance statistics, however, such data tend to be either available in oversimplified high level aggregates and lacking in methodological transparency, or, available with a great level of detail and a unified methodological approach yet overly complicated to understand. The IMF's Government Finance Statistics Yearbook shows fiscal data of around 140 countries following the Government Finance Statistics Manual 2001 framework. The associated database includes data series covering over an almost 40 year period. The IMF's Statistics Department embarked on several initiatives to improve its accessibility

The first two decades of the twenty-first century have witnessed an influx of innovations and reforms in public financial management. The current wave of reforms is markedly different from those in the past, owing to the sheer number of innovations, their widespread adoption, and the sense that they add up to a fundamental change in the way governments manage public money. This book takes stock of the most important innovations that have emerged over the past two decades, including fiscal responsibility legislation, fiscal rules, medium-term budget frameworks, fiscal councils, fiscal risk management techniques, performance budgeting, and accrual reporting and accounting. Not merely a handbook or manual describing practices in the field, the volume instead poses critical questions about innovations; the issues and challenges that have appeared along the way, including those associated with the global economic crisis; and how the ground can be prepared for the next generation of public financial management reforms.

The Fund has recognized in recent years that one cannot separate issues of economic growth and stability on one hand and equality on the other. Indeed, there is a strong case for considering inequality and an inability to sustain economic growth as two sides of the same coin. Central to the Funds mandate is providing advice that will enable members economies to grow on a sustained basis. But the Fund has rightly been cautious about recommending the use of redistributive policies given that such policies may themselves undercut economic efficiency and the prospects for sustained growth (the so-called leaky bucket hypothesis written about by the famous Yale economist Arthur Okun in the 1970s). This SDN follows up the previous SDN on inequality and growth by focusing on the role of redistribution. It finds that, from the perspective of the best available macroeconomic data, there is not a lot of evidence that redistribution has in fact undercut economic growth (except in extreme cases). One should be careful not to assume thereforeas Okun and others havethat there is a big tradeoff between redistribution and growth.

During the 1990s, Suriname was subject to exogenous shocks that were exacerbated by inadequate macroeconomic policy responses. During that decade, fiscal and monetary policies tended to vastly amplify the effects of negative shocks to bauxite export receipts, leading to various episodes of nearhyperinflation. Output growth was also highly volatile, reflecting to some extent the countrys dependence on mining exports, but more so the highly inadequate macroeconomic policies. In recent years, the outlook has turned substantively more positive. The favorable external environment and the stability-oriented policies of the Venetiaan administration have boosted confidence in the economy, leading to increased investment, domestic economic activity, and employment. Nonetheless, the economy continues to be based largely on commodity exports, mainly bauxite, oil, and gold, while nontraditional agricultural exports face significant developmental and export hurdles. A detai