This paper analyses the reaction of fiscal policy to the cycle in OECD countries. The results suggest that while overall government balances were counter-cyclical in the past and more so in economic downturns than in upswings, discretionary fiscal policy was neutral on average. However,...

The international financial linkage block of the OECD Secretariat's multi-country model, INTERLINK, is based on a portfolio balance model of exchange rate determination. International consistency is ensured by cross country restrictions on parameters imposed during estimation (1). However, in an...

In this working paper, we decompose fiscal policy in three components: i) responsiveness, ii) persistence and iii) discretion. Using a sample of 132 countries, our results point out that fiscal policy tends to be more persistent than responding to output variations. We also found that while the...