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Spain
This 2016 Article IV Consultation highlights that Spain’s economy has continued its recovery. Real GDP expanded by 3.2 percent in 2015 with the same growth rate expected for 2016, despite a prolonged period of domestic political uncertainty. Nearly 1.1 million jobs were created over the past two years. The rebound in private consumption, exports, and investment, aided by past reforms, has remained the main driver of growth. The current account is projected to record its fourth consecutive annual surplus. Private sector balance sheets have further strengthened, while public debt remains high at about 100 percent of GDP. Real GDP growth is projected to moderate to 2.3 percent in 2017.
Challenges to Central Banking from Globalized Financial Systems
Increasing global financial market integration is presenting new challenges to central banks as they seek to attain low inflation and financial stability. This volume is based on a conference hosted by the IMF in September 2002. It examines key issues such as the choice of nominal anchor for countries susceptible to shifts in capital flows, what can be done to prevent and deal decisively with financial crises, and how central bankers should think about the difficult choices when monetary objectives and financial stability objectives come into conflict.
Monetary Union Among Member Countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council
The six member countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC)--Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates--have made important progress toward economic and financial integration, with the aim of establishing an economic and monetary union. This paper provides a detailed analysis of the economic performance and policies of the GCC countries during 1990-2002. Drawing on the lessons from the experience of selected currency and monetary unions in Africa, Europe, and the Caribbean, it assesses the potential costs and benefits of a common currency for GCC countries and also reviews the options for implementing a monetary union among these countries.
Fiscal Rules in Response to the Crisis
Strengthening fiscal frameworks, in particular fiscal rules, has emerged as a key response to the fiscal legacy of the crisis. This paper takes stock of fiscal rules in use around the world, compiles a dataset - covering national and supranational fiscal rules, in 81 countries from 1985 to end-March 2012 - and presents details about the rules’ key design elements, particularly in support of enforcement. This information is summarized in a set of fiscal rules indices. Three key findings emerge: (i) many new fiscal rules have been adopted and existing ones strengthened in response to the crisis; (ii) the number of fiscal rules and the comprehensiveness of the design features in emerging economies has caught up to those in advanced economies; and (iii) the "next-generation" fiscal rules are increasingly complex as they combine the objectives of sustainability and with the need for flexibility in response to shocks, thereby creating new challenges for implementation, communication, and monitoring.
Fiscal Rules at a Glance
This paper provides country-specific information on fiscal rules in use in 81 countries from 1985 to end-September 2012. It serves as background material and update of the July 2012 Working Paper “Fiscal Rules in Response to the Crisis—Toward the ‘Next Generation’ Rules: A New Dataset” and is also available in an easy accessible electronic data visualization tool (http://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/FiscalRules/map/map.htm.).The dataset covers four types of rules: budget balance rules, debt rules, expenditure rules, and revenue rules, applying to the central or general government or the public sector. It also presents details on various characteristics of rules, such as their legal basis, coverage, escape clauses, as well as key supporting features such as independent monitoring bodies.
Issues in Electronic Banking
Using electronic delivery channels for banking services and products has become increasingly popular in recent years. Electronic banking makes it possible to offer banking services around the world 24 hours a day. The dependence on technology for providing the services with the necessary security, and the cross-border nature of transactions, involve additional risks for banks and new challenges for banking regulators and supervisors. This paper provides an overview of some of the issues resulting from the development of electronic banking and how they are currently being addressed by regulatory and supervisory authorities.
Trust What You Hear: Policy Communication, Expectations, and Fiscal Credibility
How do policy communications on future f iscal targets af fect market expectations and beliefs about the future conduct of f iscal policy? In this paper, we develop indicators of f iscal credibility that quantify the degree to which policy announcements anchor expectations, based on the deviation of private expectations f rom official targets, for 41 countries. We find that policy announcements partly re-anchor expectations and that f iscal rules and strong fiscal institutions, as well as a good policy track record, contribute to magnifying this effect, thereby improving fiscal credibility. Conversely, empirical analysis suggests that markets reward credibility with more favorable sovereign financing conditions.
Another Look at Governments’ Balance Sheets
When discussing debt reduction strategies, little attention has been given to the role of governments’ nonfinancial assets. This is in part because data are scarce. Drawing on various data sources, this paper looks at the size, composition, and management of state-owned nonfinancial assets across 32 economies, with particular focus on the advanced G-20 economies. We find that reported nonfinancial assets comprise mostly structures (such as roads and buildings) and,when valued, land. These assets have increased over time, mostly due to higher property and commodity prices, and are, in large part, owned by subnational governments. Many countries have launched reforms with a view to streamlining public administrations, but receipts and savings have been rather small so far. Governments tend to consider relatively small sets of assets to be disposable, though preferences could change in the future. A potential source for future revenues could be greater reliance on user charges, such as road tolls. In most cases, a first step for more effective asset management has to be the expansion and improvement of data compilation.
A toolkit for Assessing Fiscal Vulnerabilities and Risks in Advanced Economies
This paper presents a range of tools and indicators for analyzing fiscal vulnerabilities and risks for advanced economies. The analysis covers key short-, medium- and long-term dimensions. Short-term pressures are captured by assessing (i) gross funding needs, (ii) market perceptions of default risk, and (iii) stress dependence among sovereigns. Medium- and long-term pressures are summarized by (iv) medium- and long-term budgetary adjustment needs, (v) susceptibility of debt projections to growth and interest rate shocks, and (vi) stochastic risks to medium-term debt dynamics. Aiming to cover a wide range of advanced economies and minimize data lags, has also influenced the selection of empirical methods. Due to these features, they can, for example, help inform the joint IMF-FSB Early Warning Exercise (EWE) on the fiscal dimensions of economic risks.
Affordable Rental Housing: Making It Part of Europe’s Recovery
Many European economies have faced pressure from rental housing affordability that has widened social and economic divergence. While significant country and regional differences exist, this departmental paper finds that in many advanced European economies a large and rising share of low-income renters, the young, and those living in cities is overburdened. In several locations, middle-income groups also increasingly face rental affordability issues.
