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Business and Economics > Public Finance

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Cover IMF Staff Country Reports
Republic of San Marino: 2024 Article IV Consultation-Press Release and Staff Report
International Monetary Fund. European Dept.
The 2024 Article IV Consultation discusses that San Marino’s economy has remained resilient, with economic activity stabilizing at high levels and record employment, despite the regional slowdown and high interest rates. Growth has slowed due to weakening external demand but remains positive as the decline in manufacturing activity has been offset by strong performance in the service sector. With easing financing conditions and the stabilization of external demand, growth is expected to pick up gradually. Inflation has declined to below two percent and it is expected to remain at low levels. The fiscal position is stronger than expected. The government has saved the cyclical tax revenues, kept expenditures in check, and achieved strong primary balance in 2023. Structural reforms are critical to lift potential growth. The conclusion of the EU association negotiations, which signals strong commitment to deeper integration with the EU, is welcome. The successful implementation of the agreement is a priority to enhance productivity and the authorities should ensure sufficient resources and staff are available to support implementation without undermining the fiscal consolidation path.
Keywords:
Sta balance of payments statistics; article IV consultation discussion; Sta government finance statistics; Sta GDDS metadata development; currency of San Marino; Fiscal stance; Nonperforming loans; Pension spending; Global; Europe
Cover IMF Working Papers
The Economic Impact of Fiscal Policy Uncertainty: Evidence from a New Cross-Country Database
Gee Hee Hong
,
Shikun (Barry) Ke
, and
Anh D. M. Nguyen
Fiscal policy uncertainty (FPU)—ambiguity in government spending and tax plans, as well as in public debt valuation—is widely regarded as a source of economic and financial disruptions. However, assessing its impact has so far been limited to a few large economies. In this paper, we construct a novel database of news-based fiscal policy uncertainty for 189 countries. Importantly, we track fiscal uncertainty events that generate global attention that we refer to as the “global fiscal policy uncertainty." This uncertainty has contractionary effects, reducing industrial production in both advanced and emerging market economies, with impacts greater than country-specific fiscal policy uncertainty. Additionally, global fiscal policy uncertainty raises sovereign borrowing costs and generates synchronous movements in the global financial variables, even after accounting for US monetary policy shocks.
Keywords:
Fiscal policy uncertainty; news-based uncertainty; propagation of global shocks; VAR; novel database; uncertainty events; impact of Fiscal Policy Uncertainty; FPU index; uncertainty indicator; Industrial production; Debt default; Global
Cover IMF Staff Country Reports
Italy: 2024 Article IV Consultation-Press Release; Staff Report; and Statement by the Executive Director for Italy
International Monetary Fund. European Dept.
The Article IV Consultation discusses that Italy’s economy has recovered well from the coronavirus disease and energy price shocks. Employment rose alongside real activity. Financial conditions have eased somewhat but remain tight. Growth is forecast to average around ¾ percent in 2024–2026 as continued ramp up in investment under the EU-financed National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP) broadly offsets the drop in tax-credit financed residential investment. Frontloading adjustment would moderate risks from high public debt and make room for productivity-enhancing spending, aging costs, and absorbing potential shocks. In order to raise productivity, full and timely NRRP execution, with a follow up plan of critical public infrastructure investments, education reform, and improving the business climate are needed. Deeper capital markets would facilitate private investment while industrial policy should be used selectively to correct market failures. Improving the compatibility of work and family life is needed to raise the birth rate and the share of working women.
Keywords:
consultation discussion; currency of Italy; policy scenario; government securities market; budget decision; Tax allowances; Loans; Global; North Africa
Cover The IMF and the European Debt Crisis
The IMF and the European Debt Crisis
Harold James

Abstract

The book explores the Fund’s engagement in Europe in the aftermath of the 2008 global financial crisis, and especially after 2010. It explains how, why, and with what consequences the International Monetary Fund—along with the European Central Bank and the European Commission (together known as “the troika”)—supported adjustment programs in Greece, Ireland, Portugal, and Cyprus as well as helping to monitor Spain’s adjustment program and exploring modalities for supporting Italy. Additionally, it analyzes how the euro area developments interacted with and affected the rest of Europe, including not only eastern and southeastern Europe but also the United Kingdom, where the political fallout from post-financial crisis populism—in the form of “Brexit” from the European Union—was, in the end, the most extreme. The IMF’s European programs embroiled the Fund in numerous controversies over the exceptionally large lending, over whether or not to impose losses on private creditors, and over the mix between external financing and internal adjustment undertaken by program countries. They also required the IMF to confront longstanding questions about its governance and evenhandedness in the treatment of different segments of its membership. The crisis programs, with Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Cyprus, all revolved around debt sustainability. In the Greek case, after an intense internal debate, the IMF initially chose a program without debt reduction because it feared that such a program–even if ultimately in the interests of Greece, the client country–would trigger a panic of banks and other creditors and thus generate contagion for the rest of Europe. Learning from the Greek case, in Ireland and Portugal, the IMF pushed for debt reduction, to which the government in Ireland but not in Portugal was sympathetic. There was thus no private sector debt reduction in Ireland and Portugal. The European programs were caught up in big geopolitical debates about the appropriate role of the Fund in the aftermath of the global financial crisis. The book examines the intellectual and policy shifts that took place in the IMF as a result of the controversies about its European programs. It concludes with some reflections on how all the programs also produced genuine policy reform and held out the possibility of a return to growth and prosperity.

Keywords:
Debt; debt sustainability; bank crisis; deflation; IMF conditionality; policy reform; current account imbalances.; IMF mission; finance minister; IMF crisis lending; IMF official; stabilization plan; Debt restructuring; Sovereign bonds; Europe; Global; Eastern Europe; Baltics; East Asia
Cover IMF Staff Country Reports
Italy: 2023 Article IV Consultation-Press Release; Staff Report; and Statement by the Executive Director for Italy
International Monetary Fund. European Dept.
The 2023 Article IV Consultation highlights that the Italian economy has weathered well the effects of Russia’s war in Ukraine, growing by 3.7 percent in 2022. Private consumption rose robustly on recovery in employment, buoyant tourism, and extensive fiscal support of real purchasing power. Growth in services and construction offset weakness in manufacturing, especially in energy-intensive industries affected by high-energy prices. Consumer prices increased, largely on surging energy prices, financial conditions tightened considerably and yields on Italian government bonds have risen as monetary policy tightened. Growth is expected to enter a slower phase and downside risks dominate the outlook. Growth is forecast to moderate to 1.1 percent in 2023 and to 0.9 percent in 2024, and then to pick up temporarily to 1.1 percent in 2025. Headline inflation is projected to decline steeply to 5.2 percent in 2023 and to 2.5 percent in 2024, driven by lower energy and food prices.
Keywords:
headline inflation; money market rate; private sector liquidity; current account norm; potential GDP; export market shares; liability positions vis-a-vis nonresident; Energy prices; Tax allowances; Loans; Wages; Global
Cover IMF Staff Country Reports
Italy: Selected Issues
International Monetary Fund. European Dept.
This Selected Issues paper focuses on economic challenges and options for overcoming the demographic drag in Italy. Italy has large catch-up potential to help overcome the demographic drag on output, but fundamental changes are needed to shift from the current suboptimal equilibrium. On numerous metrics, Italy is among the worst EU performers in areas that directly bear on output, including female labor force participation, NEET youth, educational attainment, and digitalization. Increasing employment is essential, but not sufficient. While boosting female labor force participation and the effective retirement age would raise economic output, it would not achieve growth in the end unless accompanied by higher capital and total factor productivity. Going forward, Italy needs a sustained, pro-growth strategy to significantly boost productivity in order to counteract the effect of demographic decline. While there is scope to quickly narrow labor participation gaps, reforms are needed to address critical shortcomings in education, competition, public administration, and the judicial system. However, such transformational change likely entails long gestation periods. It is therefore imperative that these reforms be implemented promptly and decisively.
Keywords:
ECB asset purchase; education outcome; Italy's sovereign bond; AES emission intensity; GhC emission; Yield curve; Sovereign bonds; Labor force participation; Greenhouse gas emissions; Global; Europe
Cover IMF Staff Country Reports
Euro Area Policies: 2023 Article IV Consultation-Press Release; Staff Report; and Statement by the Executive Director for Euro Area; IMF Country Report No. 23/264
International Monetary Fund. European Dept.
The 2023 Article IV Consultation discusses that the euro area economy has shown remarkable resilience in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the largest terms of trade shock in several decades, thanks to a swift policy response and a strong rebound in contact-intensive services. Looking ahead, growth is expected to pick up gradually throughout 2023 and 2024, supported by a recovery in real incomes in the context of continued tight labor market conditions, a further easing of supply constraints, and firmer external demand, even as financial conditions continue to tighten. While headline inflation has fallen sharply recently after reaching record high levels, core inflation is proving more persistent. As tight financial conditions restrain demand and supply shocks dissipate further, inflation is set to decline further but is expected to remain elevated for an extended period. Renewed supply shocks, which could result from an escalation of the war in Ukraine and a related increase of commodity prices, or a further intensification of geoeconomic fragmentation, would also push up inflation and hurt growth. On the upside, the economy could again prove more resilient than expected, especially amid a still large stock of excess savings.
Keywords:
Euro area headline inflation; inflation expectation; EU climate investment fund; EU AML authority; EU institution; EU bank; core inflation; EU economy; Inflation; Energy prices; Fiscal stance; Monetary tightening; Global; Europe
Cover IMF Working Papers
Raising Rates with a Large Balance Sheet: The Eurosystem’s Net Income and its Fiscal Implications
Nazim Belhocine
,
Mr. Ashok Vir Bhatia
, and
Jan Frie
The Eurosystem, having purposefully expanded its footprint in recent years, confronts a period of loss-making as rising policy rates lift the remuneration of bank reserves while assets churn more slowly. This paper projects the net income of the Eurosystem and its “top-five” national central banks over a ten-year horizon, finding that losses, while large, will be temporary and recoupable. The policy conclusions are fourfold. First, the temporary and recoupable nature of the loss-making obviates any need for capital contributions or indemnities from the state, instead allowing losses to be offset against future net income. Second, it must nonetheless be communicated that fiscal impacts will be material, with annual taxes and transfers of 0.1−0.2 percent of GDP giving way to potentially long interruptions in some cases. Third, more-conservative profit distribution policies in the future steady state could help mitigate the on-off pattern of dividends. Finally and most vitally, loss-making must remain orthogonal to monetary policy decision-making, as indeed it is at the ECB. Ultimately, credibility will rest on performance in delivering on the price stability mandate.
Keywords:
Eurosystem; balance sheet; monetary policy; profit distribution; seigniorage; central bank independence; ECB Policy; net purchase; QE portfolio; selected NCBs; Eurosystem's net income; rate path; pooling reference rate; distribution policy; Income; Financial statements; Unconventional monetary policies; Central bank policy rate; Global; Europe
Cover IMF Working Papers
Fiscal Anatomy of Two Crises and an Interlude
Xuehui Han
,
Mr. Paolo Mauro
, and
Mr. John Ralyea
The Global Financial Crisis (GFC) and the COVID-19 pandemic are associated with the largest increases in public debt ratios since World War II. We decompose unexpected changes in debt ratios into the role of surprises in economic growth, interest costs, policy measures, and other factors. During both crises, lower-than-expected output contributed the most to higher-than-expected debt ratios. Fiscal policy measures recorded in the public deficit were similar in the two episodes. We also analyze the decade-long interlude (2010-19). Rather than declining as foreseen in a normative scenario, debt ratios remained stable on average, as interest rates, policy adjustment and, in some countries, economic growth turned out lower than expected.
Keywords:
Crisis Management; Public debt; Deficit; Forecasts; fiscal policy measure; debt surprise; debt development; decomposition of debt; IMF working paper 2023/117; COVID-19; Global financial crisis of 2008-2009; Inflation; Global
Cover IMF Working Papers
Debt Mutualization in the Euro Area: A Quantitative Exploration
Mr. Sakai Ando
,
Mr. Giovanni Dell'Ariccia
,
Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas
,
Guido Lorenzoni
,
Adrian Peralta
, and
Mr. Francisco Roch
This paper explores the feasibility of an idea proposed first by the German Council of Economic Experts in 2011 and revisited by Italian and French authorities in 2021: the one-off mutualization of some European legacy debt through the creation of a European Debt Management Agency (EDMA). The paper does not argue in favor or against these proposals or make a proposal of its own. Rather it outlines a conceptual framework that can be used to quantify the contours of mutualization proposals and draws lessons from the debt assumption in the United States in 1790. The framework suggests that by capitalizing the convenience yield on European-wide safe assets, the EDMA could issue up to 15 percent of euro area GDP, helping to put national debts on a sounder trajectory. The analysis suggests that, without mutualization, some euro area countries are likely to experience decreasing debt-to-GDP ratios over the forecast period. This is not the case for Belgium, Finland, France, Italy, and Spain, where further fiscal consolidation would be needed. For these countries, we consider the effects of a debt mutualization equivalent to 26 percent of their GDP. For Italy, this operation alone is enough to ensure a decreasing debt-to-GDP path. For the others, the news is more mixed: while the additional fiscal consolidation is smaller, 1.3 to 2.3 percent of GDP are still required to reduce debt with 95 percent probability.
Keywords:
Sovereign Debt; Debt Mutualization; Debt Assumption; Convenience Yield; Safe Assets.; debt mutualization equivalent; mutualization proposal; EDMA debt; Debt reduction; Fiscal consolidation; Debt sustainability analysis; Fiscal stance; Europe