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Business and Economics > Public Finance

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Cover IMF Staff Country Reports
Gulf Cooperation Council: Economic Prospects and Policy Challenges for the GCC Countries
International Monetary Fund. Middle East and Central Asia Dept.
This paper on the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) discusses economic prospects and policy priorities for the GCC countries. A comprehensive package of policies should be implemented to respond to near-term shocks and uncertainty and to firmly address medium- and long-term challenges. In the near term, fiscal policy should remain prudent, avoiding procyclical spending and using the windfall from higher oil prices to rebuild buffers. Targeted and temporary fiscal measures could be undertaken to respond to shocks, if they materialize. In the medium term, GCC countries should continue pursuing fiscal consolidation consistent with ensuring intergenerational equity and sustainability, supported by a credible rules-based medium-term fiscal framework. Continued financial sector reforms are needed to support growth and stability. Structural policies should continue focusing on diversifying the economies away from hydrocarbon. Reform efforts aimed at further enhancing product market regulations, labor markets, and governance will spur growth, as will efficient investments in digital and green initiatives to accelerate transformation and support energy transition. The industrial policy should be carefully calibrated and not substitute for structural reforms while minimizing related inefficiencies.
Keywords:
Gulf Cooperation Council; GCC Countries; OPEC; GCC country; centrality indices; policies in the GCC; GCC net; GCC's acceleration; financial market; Inflation; Oil prices; Climate finance; Financial statements; Global; Middle East
Cover IMF Working Papers
Estimating Macro-Fiscal Effects of Climate Shocks From Billions of Geospatial Weather Observations
Berkay Akyapi
,
Mr. Matthieu Bellon
, and
Emanuele Massetti
A growing literature estimates the macroeconomic effect of weather using variations in annual country-level averages of temperature and precipitation. However, averages may not reveal the effects of extreme events that occur at a higher time frequency or higher spatial resolution. To address this issue, we rely on global daily weather measurements with a 30-km spatial resolution from 1979 to 2019 and construct 164 weather variables and their lags. We select a parsimonious subset of relevant weather variables using an algorithm based on the Least Absolute Shrinkage and Selection Operator. We also expand the literature by analyzing weather impacts on government revenue, expenditure, and debt, in addition to GDP per capita. We find that an increase in the occurrence of high temperatures and droughts reduce GDP, whereas more frequent mild temperatures have a positive impact. The share of GDP variations that is explained by weather as captured by the handful of our selected variables is much higher than what was previously implied by using annual temperature and precipitation averages. We also find evidence of counter-cyclical fiscal policies that mitigate adverse weather shocks, especially excessive or unusually low precipitation episodes.
Keywords:
climate; extreme weather; macro economy; big data; weather variable; weather shock; OLS estimation outcome; climate variable; weather data sources; Natural disasters; Climate change; Global; Middle East; Sub-Saharan Africa; East Asia; East Africa; GDP effect; weather observation
Cover Policy Papers
Economic Prospects and Policy Challenges for the GCC Countries - 2021
International Monetary Fund
GCC policymakers moved quickly to mitigate the health and economic impacts of twin COVID-19 and oil price shocks. Infection rates have declined across the GCC to well below previous peaks, though countries have experienced successive waves of the virus, and economic recoveries have begun to take hold. Nevertheless, GCC policymakers must navigate a challenging and uncertain landscape. The pandemic continues to cloud the global outlook as countries are in different phases of recovery, with varied growth prospects and policy space
Keywords:
oil market development; oil growth; oil balance; climate change impact; GCC economy; Oil prices; COVID-19; Oil consumption; Climate change; Global; Fiscal stance
Cover IMF Working Papers
Successful Transitions from Public to Private-Sector Led Growth: Lessons for Benin
Aissatou Diallo
Many Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries, like Benin, have scaled up public investment during the last decade. Such a strategy contributed to the improvement of infrastructure, but also to a build-up of debt vulnerabilities. Looking forward, the planned fiscal consolidation will result in some restraint of public spending, and, in particular, public investment. In this context, maintaining or even raising the region’s economic growth will require an offset by the private sector. The analysis draws lessons from countries that have successfully transitioned from public investment to private investment-led growth using a global sample starting in the mid-1980s. These lessons highlight policies that have been crucial in fostering a rebound of private investment in the wake of a contraction of public investment. The analytical framework proposed by Hausman, Rodrik and Velasco (2005) is used to identify and classify such policies. Finally, the paper analyses how the identified policies could help Benin achieving a smooth transition from public to private sector-led growth.
Keywords:
Private and public investment; growth; transition; fiscal consolidation; lessons; expansionary fiscal consolidation literature; investment-led growth; identified policy; scaling-up program; investment scaling-up; Private investment; Public investment spending; Fiscal consolidation; Infrastructure; Global; Sub-Saharan Africa
Cover Policy Papers
Economic Prospects and Policy Challenges for the GCC Countries
International Monetary Fund. Middle East and Central Asia Dept.
The COVID-19 pandemic is having far-reaching consequences for the global economy. Measures to contain the spread of the virus have led to sharp declines in economic activity across the globe, particularly in 2020Q2. The hardest hit sectors have been those requiring intensive human contact, such as tourism, transportation, services, and construction, while, in general, IT-intensive activities have fared better. The economic contraction is most significant in advanced economies. The GCC countries face a double impact from the coronavirus and lower oil prices. GCC authorities have implemented a range of appropriate measures to mitigate the economic damage, including fiscal packages, relaxation of monetary and macroprudential rules, and the injection of liquidity into the banking system, and there are recent signs of improvement. Low oil prices have caused a sharp deterioration of external and fiscal balances, and fiscal strains are evident in countries with higher debt levels.
Keywords:
PP; GCC country; IMF staff calculation; GCC authorities; labor market; GCC economy; GCC inflation; central bank; COVID-19; Oil prices; Fiscal consolidation; Oil; Global
Cover Departmental Papers
Social Spending for Inclusive Growth in the Middle East and Central Asia
Mr. Koshy Mathai
,
Mr. Christoph Duenwald
,
Ms. Anastasia Guscina
,
Rayah Al-Farah
,
Mr. Hatim Bukhari
,
Mr. Atif Chaudry
,
Moataz El-Said
,
Fozan Fareed
,
Mrs. Kerstin Gerling
,
Nghia-Piotr Le
,
Mr. Franto Ricka
,
Mr. Cesar Serra
,
Tetyana Sydorenko
,
Mr. Sébastien Walker
, and
Mr. Mohammed Zaher
This paper examines the role of social spending in improving socioeconomic outcomes in the Middle East and Central Asia. In particular, it addresses the following questions: (1) how large is social spending across the region? (2) how do countries in the region fare on socioeconomic outcomes? (3) how important is social spending as a determinant of these outcomes? and (4) how efficient is social spending in the region?
Keywords:
Social spending; Social protection; Inclusive growth; DPPP; DP; IMF staff calculation; spend; purchasing power parity; spending efficiency; IMF emergency financing operation; health care spending adequacy; care spending; public health care spending; wasteful spending; consumption expenditure; foreign-aid-funded spending; infant mortality; Health care spending; Education spending; Middle East and Central Asia; Global
Cover Departmental Papers
Social Spending for Inclusive Growth in the Middle East and Central Asia
Mr. Koshy Mathai
,
Mr. Christoph Duenwald
,
Ms. Anastasia Guscina
,
Rayah Al-Farah
,
Mr. Hatim Bukhari
,
Mr. Atif Chaudry
,
Moataz El-Said
,
Fozan Fareed
,
Mrs. Kerstin Gerling
,
Nghia-Piotr Le
,
Mr. Franto Ricka
,
Mr. Cesar Serra
,
Tetyana Sydorenko
,
Mr. Sébastien Walker
, and
Mr. Mohammed Zaher
This paper examines the role of social spending in improving socioeconomic outcomes in the Middle East and Central Asia. In particular, it addresses the following questions: (1) how large is social spending across the region? (2) how do countries in the region fare on socioeconomic outcomes? (3) how important is social spending as a determinant of these outcomes? and (4) how efficient is social spending in the region?
Keywords:
Social spending; Social protection; Inclusive growth; DPPP; DP; IMF staff calculation; spend; purchasing power parity; spending efficiency
Cover Departmental Papers
Social Spending for Inclusive Growth in the Middle East and Central Asia
Mr. Koshy Mathai
,
Mr. Christoph Duenwald
,
Ms. Anastasia Guscina
,
Rayah Al-Farah
,
Mr. Hatim Bukhari
,
Mr. Atif Chaudry
,
Moataz El-Said
,
Fozan Fareed
,
Mrs. Kerstin Gerling
,
Nghia-Piotr Le
,
Mr. Franto Ricka
,
Mr. Cesar Serra
,
Tetyana Sydorenko
,
Mr. Sébastien Walker
, and
Mr. Mohammed Zaher
This paper examines the role of social spending in improving socioeconomic outcomes in the Middle East and Central Asia. In particular, it addresses the following questions: (1) how large is social spending across the region? (2) how do countries in the region fare on socioeconomic outcomes? (3) how important is social spending as a determinant of these outcomes? and (4) how efficient is social spending in the region?
Keywords:
Social spending; Social protection; Inclusive growth; DPPP; DP; IMF staff calculation; spend; purchasing power parity; spending efficiency
Cover IMF Working Papers
Measuring Social Unrest Using Media Reports
Mr. Philip Barrett
,
Maximiliano Appendino
,
Kate Nguyen
, and
Jorge de Leon Miranda
We present a new index of social unrest based on counts of relevant media reports. The index consists of individual monthly time series for 130 countries, available with almost no lag, and can be easily and transparently replicated. Spikes in the index identify major events, which correspond very closely to event timelines from external sources for four major regional waves of social unrest. We show that the cross-sectional distribution of the index can be simply and precisely characterized, and that social unrest is associated with a 3 percentage point increase in the frequency of social unrest domestically and a 1 percent increase in neighbors in the next six months. Despite this, social unrest is not a better predictor of future social unrest than the country average rate.
Keywords:
WP; Arabic language; appendix E; political science; Social Unrest; Protest; Media; unrest events; RSUI event coding; terms OR; RSUI index; country-horizon pair; statistical analysis; RSUI data; Public expenditure review; Middle East; North Africa; Sub-Saharan Africa; South America
Cover IMF Staff Country Reports
Benin: Selected Issues
International Monetary Fund. African Dept.
Selected Issues
Keywords:
ISCR; CR; Benin; authority; administration