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This selected issues paper on Iceland reports that since mid-2009, Iceland has undergone a heavily frontloaded fiscal consolidation program to bring government finances to a sustainable level. To maintain the adjustment gains achieved during the last 21⁄2 years, the authorities have started drafting a new organic budget law, which would codify recent reforms in the budget framework and introduce principles for fiscal policymaking. Iceland’s economy is exposed to adverse shocks. The external outlook continues to pose challenges, as key trading partners face weak growth prospects.
Establishing a political, economic, and historical framework to study sovereign wealth funds, this book provides the broadest and most detailed analysis to date.
Amidst a global backdrop of persistent post-COVID inflation and spillovers from Russia’s war in Ukraine, the countries of the Caucasus and Central Asia (CCA) region have faced strong price pressures in recent years. Inflation is estimated to have peaked in early 2023, but still exceeds central bank targets. In particular, core inflation remains stubbornly high reflecting a combination of second-round effects, surges in global energy and food prices, and domestic demand pressures. More broadly, uncertainty and downside risks also weigh on the economic outlook, including due to regional tensions, financial turmoil related to international monetary policy normalization, and a growth slowdown ...
This Selected Issues paper analyzes the fiscal strength of the economy of the Czech Republic. Fiscal policy in the Czech Republic has shown a procyclical bias temporarily interrupted during the crisis years. The large stimulus implemented has been more than compensated by a frontloaded adjustment. However, the fiscal framework could be improved to increase transparency, predictability, and credibility of policy and minimize the procyclical bias. This could be achieved by incorporating, among other things, a simple and credible rule with a medium-term fiscal anchor set in structural terms.
We estimate sovereign bond spreads of 28 emerging economies over the period January 1998-December 2011 and test the ability of the model in generating accurate in-sample predictions for emerging economies bond spreads. The impact and significance of country-specific and global explanatory variables on bond spreads varies across regions, as well as economic periods. During crisis times, good macroeconomic fundamentals are helpful in containing bond spreads, but less than in non-crisis times, possibly reflecting the impact of extra-economic forces on bond spreads when a financial crisis occurs. For some emerging economies, in-sample predictions of the monthly changes in bond spreads obtained with rolling regression routines are significantly more accurate than forecasts obtained with a random walk. Rolling regression-based bond spread predictions appear to convey more information than those obtained with a linear prediction method. By contrast, bond spreads forecasts obtained with a linear prediction method are less accurate than those obtained with random guessing.
Iceland: Selected Issues
Research on the role of sovereign investments in a time of crisis is still unsatisfactory. This Research Handbook illustrates the state of the art of the legal investigation on sovereign investments, filling necessary gaps in previous research. Current
The book covers a wide range of topics of relevance to policymakers in countries that have sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) and those that receive SWF investments. Renowned experts in the field have contributed chapters. The book is organized around four themes: (1) the role and macrofinancial linkages of SWFs, (2) institutional factors, (3) investment approaches and financial markets, and (4) the postcrisis outlook. The book also discusses the challenges facing sovereign wealth funds in the coming years, from an inside perspective on countries, including Canada, Chile, China, Norway, Russia, and New Zealand. Economics of Sovereign Wealth Funds will contribute to a further understanding of the nature, strategies and behavior of SWFs and the environment in which they operate, as their importance is likely to grow in the coming years.
The Palgrave Handbook of Sovereign Wealth Funds provides a comprehensive, detailed analysis of these funds from a multidimensional perspective consisting of 33 chapters divided into seven sections. Section I provides background material about SWFs, providing a foundation for the remainder of the handbook. Section II examines various controversies, governance, and accountability topics involving SWFs. Section III discusses the political, legal, and tax aspects of SWFs. Section IV reviews numerous topics involving SWF management. Section V deals with SWFs' policies, preferences, and performance. Section VI provides descriptive analyses of SWFs based on country or region. It also offers a compa...
This paper (i) provides evidence on the procyclical investment behavior of major institutional investors during the global financial crisis; (ii) identifies the main factors that could account for such behavior; (iii) discusses the implications of procyclical behavior; and (iv) proposes a framework for sound investment practices for long-term investors. Such procyclical investment behavior is understandable and may be considered rational from an individual institution’s perspective. However, our main conclusion is that behaving in a manner consistent with longterm investing would lead to better long-term, risk-adjusted returns and, importantly, could lessen the potential adverse effects of the procyclical investment behavior of institutional investors on global financial stability.