The paper discusses and revisits some of the most popular stories behind the 2001 financial crisis in Argentina, i.e. the prolonged overvaluation of the peso owing to the Currency Board arrangement, the lack of fiscal adjustment, and the negative external environment which triggered a “sudden...

The main rationale for fiscal policy rules is the concern for long term sustainability of public finances, that in a monetary union may affect the other members. Among many other criticisms, the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP) has been seen as contradictory or incomplete because it focuses on...

We postulate a new method of identifying debt which we call Debt Burden (DB). We claim that DB reveals the true debt obligations of the fiscal authority. It is more accurate and transparent. Hence, DB would serve fiscal authority much better in policy making. It is powerful in a sense that it is...

This paper examines the growth pattern followed by the Chilean economy with reference to the macroeconomic reforms undertaken during the Pinochet regime, which were largely maintained by successive democratic administrations and partially reproduced by neighbouring countries. The focus is on the...

Congress asked GAO to estimate the value of FHA's Mutual Mortgage Insurance Fund, a capital reserve which backs most of FHA's single- family mortgages. This technical appendix presents estimates of the claim and non-claim termination propensities of single-family FHA mortgages. Competing risks...

All developed countries have government debt, usually a sizeable proportion of output. This paper proposes that governments that cannot commit to future policy choices face a trade-off that explains the level of debt. On the one hand, the government would like to increase debt and delay...

This paper is a review of the different approaches on external debt sustainability. The Heavily Indebted Poor Country (HIPC) Initiative was launched to assure a permanent exit from debt dependence. However, the IMF-World Bank program is not without faults, in particular for what concerns debt...

The purposes of this paper are twofold: first, it aims at critically evaluating the solvency criterion, pioneered by Hamilton and Flavin (1986), which is nowadays almost hegemonic in the analysis of public debt sustainability, and at illustrating alternative measures of sustainability grounded...

This paper aims at discussing the main features of Spain’s tax system, its recent reforms and those underway. The current state of the main taxes, their future reforms are studied starting from 1975, when Spain shifted to democracy. Direct taxes, indirect taxes and social security...

In this paper a simple dynastic overlapping-generations model with homogeneous agents is used to analyze the optimal use of capital income tax, labor income tax and estate tax. The results of this analysis add to the conventional wisdom about capital income taxation: while it is true that in the...