We examine whether fiscal rules constrain incumbent governments to use fiscal policy for re-election purposes. Using data on fiscal rules provided by the IMF for a sample of 77 (advanced and developing) countries over the 1984-2015 period, we find that after the Global Financial Crisis political...

This paper uses a Financial Stress Index (FSI) for 13 OECD countries to examine which variables can help predicting financial stress. A stress index measures the current state of stress in the financial system and summarizes it in a single statistic. We employ three criteria for indicators to be...