After the decline in oil prices, many oil exporters face the need to improve their external balances. Special characteristics of oil exporters make the exchange rate an ineffective instrument for this purpose and give fiscal policy a sizeable role. These conclusions are supported by regression...

The Late Middle Ages (c.1300–c.1500) saw the development of many of the key economic institutions of the modern unitary nation-state in Europe. After the ‘commercial revolution’ of the thirteenth century, taxes on trade became increasingly significant contributors to government finances,...

This book analyzes the various problems of growth, trade and public policy from the perspective of applied economics, based on research in areas such as public policies, trade and regulation, and development economics. Part 1 investigates the broad problems of growth and regional economy,...

We examine the existing fiscal policy paradigm in commodity-exporting countries. First, we argue that its centerpiece-the permanent income hypothesis (PIH)-is not consistent with either intergenerational equity or long-term sustainability in the presence of uncertainty. Policies to achieve these...

We build and estimate open economy two-bloc DSGE models to study the transmission and impact of shocks in Russia, Saudi Arabia and the United Kingdom. After accounting for country-specific fiscal and monetary sectors, we estimate their key policy and structural parameters. Our findings suggest...

In a number of oil producing countries, oil revenue accounts for the majority of government revenue, but is expected to be depleted in a relatively short time frame. Ensuring that fiscal policy is on a sustainable path is thus a high priority, but political and social adjustment costs create...

While models based on Friedman''s (1957) permanent-income hypothesis can provide oilproducing countries with long-run fiscal targets, they usually abstract from short-run costs associated with consolidation. This paper proposes a model that takes such adjustment costs (or ""habits"") into...

Fiscal policy in oil-producing countries can be profoundly affected by oil revenue uncertainty and volatility. Policy formulation should factor in the exhaustibility of the natural resources and aim at reducing oil revenue volatility passed on to the economy. Past fiscal policy in Nigeria has...