This paper assesses the macroeconomic impact of fiscal policy shocks for four key emerging market economies - Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRICs) – using a Bayesian Structural Vector Auto-Regressive (BSVAR) approach, a Sign-Restrictions Vector Auto-Regressive framework and a Panel Vector...

This paper investigates the link between fiscal policy shocks and movements in asset markets using a Fully Simultaneous System approach in a Bayesian framework. Building on the works of Blanchard and Perotti (2002), Leeper and Zha (2003), and Sims and Zha (1999, 2006), the empirical evidence for...

In the last twenty years Portugal struggled to keep public finances under control, notably in containing primary spending. We use a new quarterly dataset covering 1979:1-2007:4, and estimate a Bayesian Structural Autoregression model to analyze the macroeconomic effects of fiscal policy. The...

This article investigates the effects of macroeconomic policy (monetary and fiscal) on output growth during financial crises characterized by a “sudden stop” in net capital inflows in developing and emerging market economies. We investigate 83 sudden stop crises in 77 countries over...

Recent research in both the social and natural sciences has been devoted to increasing our ability to predict disasters, prepare for them and mitigate their costs. Curiously, we appear to know very little about the fiscal consequences of disasters. The likely fiscal impact of a natural disaster...

We investigate the macroeconomic effects of fiscal policy using a Bayesian Structural Vector Autoregression approach. We build on a recursive identification scheme, but we: (i) include the feedback from government debt (ii); look at the impact on the composition of output; (iii) assess the...

This paper looks at three countries that have been hard-hit by the world economic recession, and have turned to the IMF for assistance: Hungary, Latvia, and Ukraine. In all of these countries, it would appear that there were more sensible responses to the crisis that would reduce the loss of...

The analysis of 1991 budget implementation proves that there where no significant changes in budget revenue and expenditure structure. The two exceptions are the entrenchment of capital expenses caused by the economic depression and the decline in subsidies related to the price liberalization....

Economic models can be extremely useful in the process of economic policy making. At the same time it should be emphasised that economic models should never be seen as a panacea for solving all kinds of economic problems. This paper discusses to what extent economic models could act as a useful...

This paper presents strong empirical evidence that automatic stabilizers and countercyclical fiscal policy decrease output volatility. The conducted empirical analysis proves the economic intuition that the automatic fiscal stance is countercyclical, regardless of the size and the prosperity of...