Monetary policy leaves a fiscal footprint. In some circumstances, relieving the fiscal burden becomes the main goal of policy, and inflation control is subordinate. This article notes that the same is true of macroprudential policy, and it characterizes the size and sign of its fiscal footprint,...

International carbon markets are frequently propagated as an efficient instrument for reducing CO2 emissions. We argue that such markets, despite their desirable efficiency properties, might not be in the best interest of governments who are guided by strategic considerations in negotiations. We...

There are over 180 ILO conventions in many areas of labour law, industrial relations and social security, but they are not ratified universally: for the conventions adopted between 1975 and 1995, the cumulated probability of ratification is about 13 per cent ten years after their adoption. In...

Using an empirical age-period-cohort model we analyze the effects of different Pay-As-You-Go (PAYG) public pension systems on financial imbalance, on inequality in permanent income, and on the rate of return of social security assets of heterogeneous agents in terms of gender and education....

How does convenience yield interact with sovereign risk and the supply of government bonds? We propose a model of sovereign debt and default in which convenience yield arises because investors are able to pledge government bonds as collateral on financial markets. Convenience yield is dependent...

We introduce a dynamic panel threshold model to shed new light on the impact of inflation on long-term economic growth. The empirical analysis is based on a large panel-data set including 124 countries during the period from 1950 to 2004. For industrialized countries, our results confirm the...

Acknowledging the fact that the growth experience of countries is seldom well described by the average growth rate, this paper aims at identifying countries that are similar in terms of their growth process, thus emphasizing the dynamics of growth rates. To that end, the growth experience of...