This paper shows that increasing government social expenditures can make a substantive contribution to increasing household consumption in China. The paper first undertakes an empirical study of the relationship between the savings rate and social expenditures for a panel of OECD countries and...

The 2007-09 Great Recession has led to an unprecedented increase in public debt in many countries, triggering substantial fiscal adjustments. What are the distributional consequences of fiscal austerity measures? This is an important policy question. This paper analyzes the effects of fiscal...

The interest rate-growth differential (IRGD) shows a marked correlation with GDP per capita. It has been on average around 1 percentage point for large advanced economies during 1999-2008; but below -7 percentage points among non-advanced economies - exerting a powerful stabilizing influence on...

This paper explores the determinants of long-term government bond yields in the Group of Seven (G-7) economies and analyzes the factors that could explain the conundrum of very low rates in the face of a variety of adverse factors in recent years. In particular, the paper focuses on the...

Mobilization of national saving is an important determinant of investment and growth. It assumed greater importance in the case of the Iranian economy, given the difficult external environment. This paper discusses the recent saving performance of the Iranian economy, particularly in relation to...

Within a broad framework for analyzing portfolio capital flows to developing countries, the paper undertakes a comparative analysis of equity markets in six Middle Eastern countries. The analysis, based primarily on a range of quantitative indicators, identifies the principal characteristics of...

This paper examines the composition of primary commodity exports by industrial countries and contrasts this composition with that of the exports by developing countries. Both the share of industrial countries’ commodity exports in world commodity exports, as well as in their own total...

This paper undertakes an econometric investigation into the presence of risk premium in commodity futures markets. The statistical tests are derived from a formal model of asset pricing and are applied to futures prices in a variety of commodity markets. The results suggest that for several...

This paper discusses the role of fiscal institutions, including budget rules and non-partisan agencies, in enhancing fiscal discipline. A dynamic model of fiscal policy shows that optimal institutions lack credibility unless the costs to bypass them are sufficiently high. In our model, a...

This paper assesses the extent to which crashes in emerging market currencies are predictable using simple logit models based on lagged macroeconomic and financial data. To evaluate our model, we calculate trading strategies in which an investor goes long or short in the currency depending on...