Fiscal impulse measures are used in the WEO and elsewhere to indicate the changing impact of the budget on the economy. Such measures are intended to provide more accurate indications of whether the budget is becoming more or less expansionary than would just observing moments in the actual...

A decade into the transition, many of the successor states of the former Soviet Union (FSU) continue to use energy sector quasi-fiscal activities (QFAs), especially low energy prices and the toleration of payment arrears, to provide large implicit and untargeted subsidies. These activities...

The analysis in this paper suggests that the large fiscal deficits that Pakistan has experienced over most of the period since 1970 led to some crowding out of private investment, resulting in slower output growth than would otherwise have been observed. Past fiscal deficits have also resulted...

The main purposes of this paper are to review the operational modalities and experience of oil funds currently in place in Norway, Chile (copper), the State of Alaska, Venezuela, Kuwait, and Oman, and to draw some preliminary conclusions on their contribution to enhance fiscal management. The...

This paper analyzes the decision of a government facing electoral uncertainty to implement structural reforms in the presence of fiscal restraints similar to the Stability and Growth Pact. The model shows that a pact may harm structural reforms, sacrificing future growth for present stability....

The increased budget deficit caused by the privatization of a public pension plan does not imply a relaxation of the stance of fiscal policy. The reform's impact on the fiscal stance and national saving depends primarily on its effect on the sum of explicit and implicit public debt and on the...

The paper examines the direction of causality between total government expenditure and revenue in oil-dependent GCC countries by utilizing a cointegration and error-correction modeling framework, and by calculating a variance decomposition analysis. In addition, it presents impulse responses to...

The paper surveys the role of financial markets and fiscal institutions in the transformation process going on in Eastern and Central Europe. It highlights (a) the need to create some sort of “social ecological balance” necessary for the working of a modern market economy; (b) the need to...

This paper assesses the effects of expenditure composition as well as fiscal adjustment on economic growth in a sample of 39 low-income countries during the 1990s. The paper finds that strong budgetary positions and fiscal consolidation are generally associated with higher economic growth in...

Oil-producing countries face challenges arising from the fact that oil revenue is exhaustible, volatile, and uncertain, and largely originates from abroad. Reflecting these challenges, the paper proposes some important general principles for the formulation and assessment of fiscal policy in...