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...

The reconstruction of the international order after World War I put great emphasis on social reforms through the International Labor Organization (ILO). Three types of arguments were used to promote social reform. The first asserted that international economic competition meant that social...

This paper looks at the history of money and its modern form from a scientific and mathematical point of view. The approach here is to emphasize simplicity. A straightforward model and algebraic formula for a large economy analogous to the ideal gas law of thermodynamics is proposed. It may be...