The reform of the Italian public administration has been a priority for at least two decades, with several major initiatives undertaken toward modernization and simplification. Notwithstanding laudable intentions, however, progress remains limited. This analysis is a case study of two reforms...

Machine learning tools are well known for their success in prediction. But prediction is not causation, and causal discovery is at the core of most questions concerning economic policy. Recently, however, the literature has focused more on issues of causality. This paper gently introduces some...

We construct a new, comprehensive instrument-level database of sovereign debt for 18 advanced and emerging countries over the period 1913-46. The database contains data on amounts outstanding for some 3,800 individual debt instruments as well as associated qualitative information, including...

The consumer price index (CPI) is a key economic indicator used to gauge inflation, adjust wages, pensions, and social benefits. The producer prices index (PPI) is used for forecasting and deflating GDP estimates. Both indexes are used by the Fund, policymakers, and researchers for global,...

We apply a range of models to the U.K. data to obtain estimates of the output gap. A structural VAR with an appropriate identification strategy provides improved estimates of output gap with better real time properties and lower sensitivity to temporary shocks than the usual filtering...

Global attention to ending child marriage and its socio-economic consequences is gaining momentum. Ending child marriage is not only critical from a development perspective but it also has important economic implications. This paper is the first to quantify the relationship between child...

This paper uses the strategy and data of Blanchard and Perotti (BP) to identify fiscal shocks and estimate fiscal multipliers for the United States. With these results, it computes the cumulative multiplier of Ramey and Zubairy (2018), now common in the literature. It finds that, contrary to the...

This paper studies the impact of tax-based consolidations on reelection outcomes. Using a granular database of tax-based consolidations for a panel of 10 OECD countries over the last 40 years, we find that tax reforms are politically costly but some reforms are costlier than others. Measures...

This paper outlines a simple three-country macroeconomic model designed to focus on the transmission of external shocks to Portugal. Building on the framework developed by Berg et al (2006), this model differentiates between shocks originating from both inside and outside the euro area, as well...

This paper documents the additional spending that is required for sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) to achieve meaningful progress in SDGs by 2030. Benin and Rwanda are presented in detail through case studies. The main lessons are: i) average additional spending across SSA is significant, at 19 percent...