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 monetary policy is interlinked with consideration for the more deep-seated structural issues. By shifting and destabilizing the underlying economic relationships and creating uncertainty, structural change co...

This volume brings together various analytical studies the IMF staff has undertaken on the Japanese economy, focusing on two areas of particular interest for both longer-term economic performance and recent cyclical developments. The first is Japan's saving behavior, the second is the remarkable swing in asset prices that occurred in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

This study examines external and domestic influences on Latin America’s economic performance over the past decade and a half. It notes that over the past few years, macroeconomic policies have strengthened and structural reforms have been implemented. Together with a favorable external environment, these policies have contributed to Latin America’s relatively sharp economic recovery from its last recession. The study discusses the priorities for the region’s reform agenda that could help t...

A critical analysis of public policy decisions requires a far greater depth of knowledge than can be received from news reports and political speeches. Issues such as how best to reduce traffic congestion, reduce acid rain, improve airline safety or develop a parcel of land are better understood by organizing, measuring and weighing the effects of alternative policies. The Economic Analysis of Public Policy, now in its second edition, is the ideal introduction to benefit-cost anal...

Alberta’s most insightful political commentator is back with another essential book. Kevin Taft, together with economists Mel McMillan and Junaid Jahangir, follows the money to uncover why Alberta — one of the richest places on earth — still talks poor when it comes to public services.Do we really spend more than we can afford, more than we can sustain, on health care? On education? Why doesn’t Alberta have enough hospital beds? Why have our schools faced teacher layoffs? Why are o...

Make simple sense of complex financial information!The high-profile accounting scandals of recent years have made one thing clear: You can't know too much about the company for which you work. What are the numbers? Where do you find them? How do they affect you and your staff?This fully revised and updated third edition of The McGraw-Hill 36-Hour Course: Finance for Nonfinancial Managers provides a firm grasp on what all the numbers really mean. Designed to let y...

The Field of Public Economics has been changing rapidly in recent years, and the sixteen chapters contained in this Handbook survey many of the new developments. As a field, Public Economics is defined by its objectives rather than its techniques and much of what is new is the application of modern methods of economic theory and econometrics to problems that have been addressed by economists for over two hundred years. More generally, the discussion of public finance issues also involves e...

This volume, which presents the proceedings of a seminar moderated by Wilfred Guth in Hamburg, Germany, dicusses the extent of international policy coordination, its effectiveness, and how it can be expected to work in the future.

This book offers a critical assessment of the history of the euro, its crisis, and the rescue measures taken by the European Central Bank and the community of states. The euro induced huge capital flows from the northern to the southern countries of the Eurozone that triggered an inflationary credit bubble in the latter, deprived them of their competitiveness, and made them vulnerable to the financial crisis that spilled over from the US in 2007 and 2008. As private capital shied away from...

The book leverages the insights of key economic experts who were first brought together at Goldsmiths University of London in March 2015 in order to explore alternatives to financialisation. It brings key thinkers into dialogue about what needs to change in our understanding and analysis of the state of the UK economy. Authors speak to the groundswell of interest in wrestling 'the economy' away from the orthodox economics expertise that dominates elite policy circles.Presented as a...

Value-added tax, or VAT, first introduced less than 50 years ago, is now a pivotal component of tax systems around the world. The rapid and seemingly irresistible rise of the VAT is probably the most important tax development of the latter twentieth century, and certainly the most breathtaking. Written by a team of experts from the IMF, this book examines the remarkable spread and current reach of the innovative tax and draws lessons about the design and implementation of the VAT, as experien...

Edited by Robert C. Effros, this first volume in a new series for attorneys, economists, financial managers, and the general public is based on biennial IMF seminars held for central bank general counsels. Among the topics analyzed by international banking and legal experts are jurisprudence concerning the IMF's Articles of Agreement; the debt crisis; investment dispute settlement; banking regulation, deregulation, supervision, and secrecy; electronic fund transfers (EFTS); the Basle Concorda...