This technical note on the banking system structure, performance, and medium-term challenges for Switzerland was prepared by a staff team of the International Monetary Fund as background documentation for the periodic consultation with the member country. It is based on the information available at the time it was completed in May 2007. The views expressed in this document are those of the staf...

Inspired by the studies of Bruno Latour, the article aims to illustrate the ways in which policymaking is being made within a ‘heterogeneous network’ of humans and non-humans. Through an analysis of a controversy, it argues that the policymaking process is amore complicated andmultidimensional process, which cannot be simply comprehended within the framework of predetermined roles and structure...

With the support of the Republican leadership of the US House of Representatives, Representative Chris Smith of New Jersey continues to attempt to limit provision of US family planning (FP) funding to foreign nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) who agree to enforce absolute prohibitions on engaging in abortion-related activities. Despite the fact that the House is withholding funds to meet US...

â  monetary policy rule is an approach to avoid time inconsistency problem as regarded by new classical economist to choose a time plan for policy making in order to maximize households’ well-being. the foundation of time inconsistency problem is not coincidence of expectations as an ex-ante variable, which is expected variable, with actual variable as an ex-post variable. expectations in fin...

The problems of developing country dependence on a narrow range of commodity exports are well-established. Many poorer developing countries have continued to generate a substantial proportion of their total export revenues from one or a small number of basic food commodities. In addition to the problem of declining world market prices for basic food products typically exported from developing c...

When two studies last year detailed how the World Bank's research unit had been systematically manipulating data to show that neo-liberal market reforms were promoting growth and reducing poverty in developing countries, development circles were not shocked. They merely saw the devastating findings of a study by American University Professor Robin Broad and a report by Princeton University Prof...

The first steps towards Health Technology Assessment (HTA) were taken in Romania between 1992-2002 when some form of mentorship was performed in this area with Canadian support [1]; later on, from 2002 to 2011 HTA remained a subject only for the academic and research purposes. Only the pressure brought by the Memorandum of Understanding between Romanian Government with International Monetary Fu...

Globalization can be viewed as the integration of inputs and outputs into global markets, sharing of information and knowledge, and promulgation of rules governing such integration. World Trade Organization, International Monetary Fund, and World Bank play a vital role in the process of economic globalization. The positive and negative affects of globalization and the groups that resist and sup...

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has played an important role in restructuring the Korean economy over the past three years. Relying upon survey data collected in 1998 and 1999, this paper explores the role of the IMF in Korea, as perceived by its citizens. In the eyes of the Korean people, the IMF helped their economy to recover from the crisis. However, those Koreans who experience a dec...

Introduction A t the conclusion of World War II, several international institutions were created to manage the world economy and prevent another Great Depression. These institutions include the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (now called the World Bank), and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), which was expanded and ins...