The stance of fiscal policy in CEMAC and WAEMU is strongly influenced by fiscal effort in the previous period. This persistence underscores the risks of a procyclical fiscal policy stance, given these countries' high degree of dependence on primary commodities and exposure to terms of trade...

With Japan’s public debt reaching historical levels, the need for fiscal consolidation and structural reforms have increased. As fiscal consolidation will require a sustained and large adjustment in the fiscal balance, its growth effect is a concern particularly for the short run. This...

Asset booms and sectoral changes can distort traditional estimates of structural fiscal revenue, and could lead to serious fiscal policy errors. This paper extends the estimation of structural revenues to take account of asset prices and sectoral changes, and applies this to the case of Ireland,...

Do Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPCs) suffer from a debt overhang? Is debt relief going to improve their growth rates? To answer these important questions, we look at how the debt-growth relationship varies with indebtedness levels and other country characteristics in a panel of developing...

Throughout the world, the great popularity of programs to protect those who may fall into poverty stands in contrast with the weakness of policies aimed at helping individuals who are already poor to overcome long-term poverty. In the paper, an OLG model with persistent poverty and limited...

This paper uses the Shapley Value decomposition technique to assess the factors behind the rise of inequality in China. It finds that, in many ways, inequality may have been an inevitable by-product of China’s investment and export-led growth model. Between Chinese households, we find that the...

The paper examines Senegal’s growth performance from the perspective of its povertyreducing and distributional characteristics, and discusses policies that might help make growth more inclusive. The main findings are that poverty has fallen in the last two decades, but poverty reduction has...