This paper explores the impact of political and institutional variables on public investment. Working with a sample of 80 presidential and parliamentary democracies between 1975 and 2012, we find that the rate of growth of public investment is higher at the beginning of electoral cycles and...

This paper exploits the introduction of the right of referenda at the local level in the German state of Bavaria in 1995 to study the fiscal effects of direct democracy. In the first part of the paper, we establish the relationship between referenda activity and fiscal performance by using a new...

This paper introduces a methodological innovation into Generational Accounting. By incorporating cyclically-adjusted balances into the forward-looking budget projections underlying the concept we isolate pure policy effects, which render comparisons of the fiscal sustainability indicators...

Achieving France's medium-term fiscal targets will require significant expenditure efforts. This paper identifies areas where there is scope for increasing expenditure efficiency, with a view to achieving higher quality and more sustainable fiscal consolidation. The methodology is based on a...

We study the effect of inflowing remittances - a major source of capital for many countries - on tax-revenues and tax-policy. Instrumenting remittances with changes in the oil-price interacted with a country's distance to oil-producing countries, we find that remittances have a large positive...

We implement a meta-regression-analysis for the budgetary impact of numerical fiscal rules. Based on 30 studies published in the last decade, we offer a consensus estimate with respect to the level of statistical significance, provide suggestive evidence for the effect size, and identify study...

This paper studies the long-run fiscal consequences of balanced budget rules (BBR) that are enshrined in a country's constitution. Using historical data dating back to the 19th century and applying a difference-in-difference approach we find that the introduction of a constitutional-BBR reduces...

This paper provides an empirical analysis of how the frequency and severity of terrorism affect government revenue and expenditure during the period 1970-2013 using a panel dataset on 153 countries. We find that terrorism has only a marginal negative effect on tax revenue performance, after...

How do policy communications on future f iscal targets af fect market expectations and beliefs about the future conduct of f iscal policy? In this paper, we develop indicators of f iscal credibility that quantify the degree to which policy announcements anchor expectations, based on the...

Achieving gender equality remains a significant challenge, that has only deepened with the on-set of the COVID-19 pandemic. Gender budgeting (GB) can help promote gender equality by applying a gender perspective to fiscal policies and the budget process. This paper takes stock of GB practices in...