Denmark: Selected Issues

This Selected Issues paper on Denmark underlies estimates of inefficiencies in the goods and labor markets. The IMF’s new macroeconomic model, the global economic model (GEM), has been used to provide estimates of the impact of successfully implementing the European Council’s ambitious Lisbon reform agenda. GEM incorporates markups in the goods and labor markets that are summary measures of the net impact of all the regulatory structures in an economy. The euro area goods market reform in the service sector is twice that required in Denmark, the euro area must also increase competition in manufacturing.

This paper examines the selected issues related to the economy of Denmark: divergence in house prices, house prices in Denmark's cities, macroprudential policies, and product market reform and firm productivity. Recent house price developments in Denmark have been characterized by a growing divergence between different parts of the country, with big cities experiencing much more rapid price increases than other parts. House price booms and busts in Denmark, like in many other countries, are a big-city phenomenon. Macroprudential policies can help contain risks for households, the financial system, and the broader economy, but they should be carefully calibrated to avoid an undue drag on growth.

Denmark’s public expenditure as a share of GDP is the highest in the OECD. The main difference between Denmark and the median OECD country is the larger amount of social protection expenditure. The public health expenditure of Denmark is the second highest in the OECD. Following years of strong public capital accumulation in facilities as well as in training, education, and research, Denmark’s expenditure on public investment is now low. The composition of Denmark’s expenditures is broadly in line with the high expenditure countries.

This Selected Issues paper analyzes the current account performance of Denmark in 1993-98. The paper presents a brief review of structural features of the external current account. It looks at the decline in export market share and concludes that it reflects primarily cyclical factors and the unwinding of an unsustainable export market gain immediately after the German unification. The paper also examines implications for fiscal policy of Denmark's decision to remain for the time being outside the European Monetary Union.

This Selected Issues paper examines Denmark’s fiscal framework. It evaluates its sufficiency with respect to accommodating medium-to-long-term demographic spending increases and future challenges facing the tax system. It reviews the framework’s transparency, consistency and enforceability, taking into account local government responsibilities. The paper concludes that Denmark has already made commendable progress with public finance consolidation, changing relatively large budget deficits to solid surpluses and almost halving the debt-to-GDP ratio since 1993. The fiscal framework is transparent and appears to enjoy wide public acceptance.