This paper focuses on the trade-off faced by governments in deciding the allocation of public expenditures between productivity-enhancing public infrastructures and utility-enhancing public consumption. From the modeling point of view, the paper augments a standard New Open Economy...

Demographic pressures will materialize in many economies over the next few decades. We examine the macroeconomic impact of alternative fiscal adjustment and structural reform strategies to address these global aging pressures using the IMF's Global Fiscal Model (GFM). The results suggest...

This paper analyzes the extent to which the degree of international economic integration, both financial and trade, affects corporate tax rates. It explores this issue in the context of strategic behavior by countries, taking into account other global and domestic political economy factors. Tax...

Using a DSGE model calibrated to the euro area, we analyze the international effects of a fiscal devaluation (FD) implemented as a revenue-neutral shift from employer's social contributions to the Value Added Tax. We find that a FD in ‘Southern European countries’ has a strong...

This paper shows that increasing government social expenditures can make a substantive contribution to increasing household consumption in China. The paper first undertakes an empirical study of the relationship between the savings rate and social expenditures for a panel of OECD countries and...

This paper looks at fiscal solvency and public debt sustainability in both emerging market and advanced countries. Evidence of fiscal solvency, in the form of a robust positive conditional relationship between public debt and the primary fiscal balance, is established in both groups of...

This paper discusses the role of fiscal institutions, including budget rules and non-partisan agencies, in enhancing fiscal discipline. A dynamic model of fiscal policy shows that optimal institutions lack credibility unless the costs to bypass them are sufficiently high. In our model, a...

We use the IMF's Global Fiscal Model to evaluate recent proposals to reform social security and the tax system in the United States. Introducing personal retirement accounts is unlikely to yield significant macroeconomic benefits unless it spurs additional fiscal consolidation to prevent a large...