The COVID-19 pandemic represents an unprecedented global crisis. The task for economic policy is to help keep people alive, enterprises afloat, and households out of poverty. The pandemic has macroeconomic dimensions. First, it affects macroeconomic stability and growth. Second, the tools of...

This paper uses a recent household survey and the CEQ framework to revisit and extend previous research on the impact of fiscal policy on income redistribution, and poverty in South Africa. We find, in accordance with previous research, that direct taxes and cash transfers are overall...

Large-scale business subsidies tied to national industrial development promotion programmes are notoriously difficult to study and are often inseparable from the political economy of large government programmes. We use the Tunisian national firm registry panel database, data on treated firms,...

This paper discusses the rationale and options for a fiscal anchor for South Africa and its potential for restoring and maintaining fiscal sustainability. It argues that a well designed fiscal anchor can be useful in the current fiscal milieu, but notes that the popularity of fiscal rules belies...

The COVID-19 pandemic has had severe economic consequences in Southern Africa, resulting in an unprecedented decline in production and employment. Similar policy responses have emerged across the region, centred on temporary and inadequate relief for workers and businesses; very limited fiscal...

In order to assess the existence of expansionary fiscal consolidations in Europe, panel data models for private consumption are estimated for the EU15 countries, using annual data over the period 1970–2005. Three alternative approaches to determine fiscal episodes are used, and the level of...

In this paper, we examine the macroeconomic effects of alternative fiscal consolidation policies in the New Area-Wide Model (NAWM), a two-country open-economy model of the euro area developed at the European Central Bank (cf. Coenen et al., 2007). We model fiscal consolidation as a permanent...

The financial crisis of 2008/2009 has left European economies with a sizeable public debt stock bringing back the question what factors help to reduce these fiscal imbalances. Using data for the period 1985-2009 this paper identifies factors determining major public debt reductions. On average,...

In accounting for the rather gloomy trend of the aid effectiveness literature over the last few years, one explanatory strand has been fiscal, suggesting in particular that aid flows in weak states have tended to erode the taxbase and the structure of institutions. We pursue this idea, tracing...

This study considers the implications of alternative monetary policy regimes to deal with a laissez-faire fiscal policy rule, where the government completely spends resource revenue windfall contemporaneously. A three sector dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model, which features key...