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The Swiss economy returned to growth in 2004, supported by external demand and domestic policies. However, the recovery has been fragile, the IMF said in its annual economic review. Growth is projected to continue in 2005, although at a slower pace. The IMF Executive Board commended Switzerland’s sound economic management and flexible labor markets, which have secured low inflation and unemployment, and a high standard of living.
In a news brief issued on June 22, IMF Managing Director Michel Camdessus expressed his support for the debt relief initiative proposed at the Cologne summit. The text of News Brief 99/33, which follows, is also available on the IMF’s website (www.imf.org).
A good deal of the trade in goods, services, and assets over time, both within and across countries, involves auctions, particularly when a government or international organization is on one side of the transaction. While the particulars vary, an auction allows public access, monitoring, and equal treatment for participants at a level not normally secured when parties negotiate among themselves. Despite their importance to the public purse and the large body of work on bidding theory, practical advice on auction choice is limited. The complexity of the relevant theory is not the hurdle, since there are many accessible summaries available, including Feldman and Mehra (1993), Milgrom (1989). McAfee and McMillan (1987), and Reinhart (1992). Rather, the problem appears to be that there are few simple, applied examples of the importance of auction format beyond the classroom experiments represented by Kagel and others (1989). In practice, the auction format chosen by the seller is implicitly based on a prior (and unobservable) assessment of bidder behavior, as explained in Hansen (1985). Also, real-world experiments with award technique—as in the U.S. Treasury’s sale of bonds in the early 1970s—are usually accompanied by several changes in selling technique and not simply a change in auction format alone.
Abstract
This paper describes the structure of the world gold market, its sources of supply and demand, and how it functions. The paper examines the composition and origin of physical stocks of gold, their flows, and their market destination and also reviews the operation of bullion and paper gold markets.
Abstract
Written by Joseph Gold, former General Counsel and now Senior Consultant at the IMF, these volumes contain discussions of the ever-increasing body of cases in which the Articles have had bearing on issues before the courts.
Abstract
Written by Joseph Gold, former General Counsel and now Senior Consultant at the IMF, these volumes contain discussions of the ever-increasing body of cases in which the Articles have had a bearing on issues before the courts.
This installment in the series of articles dealing with litigation involving the Articles of Agreement of the International Monetary Fund takes up two main topics. The first topic is the application by courts in the United States, France, Italy, the Netherlands, and Austria of units of account defined in treaties as equivalent to a quantity of gold. In all but the French case, a solution based on the SDR was considered and sometimes adopted. The second topic is the relationship between provisions of the Articles and of the Treaty of Rome with respect to capital movements. The discussion is based on a decision of the Court of Justice of the European Communities.