We use a panel of developed and emerging countries for the period 1970 to 2008 to assess the cyclicality of education, health and social security government spending. We mostly find acyclical behaviour, but evidence also points to counter-cyclicality for social security spending, particularly in...

We use a panel of developed and emerging countries for the period 1970 to 2008 to assess how fiscal policy volatility and financial crises affect growth. We find that economic growth is lower in the presence of more volatile fiscal policy. Moreover, with a financial crisis government spending is...

We use a panel of 155 countries for the period 1970 to 2010 to study the (two-way) causality between government spending, revenue and growth. Our results suggest the existence of weak evidence supporting causality from expenditures or revenues to GDP per capita and provide evidence supporting...

We study the relevance of fiscal rules for growth in an European Union (EU) panel. Our results show that they foster growth, while stricter fiscal rules mitigate the adverse impact on growth from big governments. Moreover, more recent EU member states have gained from the implementation of...

Using a panel of developed and developing countries and data for the period 1980 to 2005, we find that debt crises trigger financial reforms. We also show that (i) when general economic conditions deteriorate, financial reforms become more likely to take place; (ii) IMF-stabilization programmes and...