This paper investigates the value of political institutions for financial markets, using panel data from emerging market countries. We test the hypothesis that changes in political institutions, such as improvements in democratic rights and increased government accountability, have a direct...

Over the past three decades, public spending on infrastructure, as a share of GDP, has been on the decline worldwide. Although the link between infrastructure investment and economic growth is not yet fully understood, the quality of infrastructure clearly affects a country's productivity,...

This paper introduces fiscal policy in a model of sovereign risk spreads ("spreads"). Using panel data from emerging market countries, we find that reductions in public expenditure are a more powerful tool for reducing spreads than increases in revenues. Specifically, cuts in current spending...

We examine the short- and long-term movements of government spending relative to output in 51 countries. We find that in the short term, the main components of government spending increase with output in about half of the sample countries, with some variation across spending categories and...