This paper assesses the role of international commodity prices, cyclical fluctuations, and convergence in driving inflation in 18 European emerging economies. Country specific VARs and panel estimates indicate that international commodity price shocks have a significant impact on domestic...

Fiscal performance in Latin America looks much improved this decade compared to the 1980s or 1990s. Is this a "structural" improvement or likely to be transitory? This paper answers this question by estimating the relationship between non-commodity revenue and the economic cycle, and evaluating...

In this paper, we consider the design of the surveillance, and, in particular, the fiscal criteria in the Central African Economic and Monetary Community (CEMAC) with the view to ensuring they are consistent with internal and external sustainability. This consistency is important within a...

This paper applies a disaggregated method for the calculation of the cyclical component of the budget balance for South Africa with an emphasis on the effect of commodity and asset prices, and credit cycle. Results show that the cyclicality of tax revenue is mostly explained by the variations in...

The recent boom and bust in commodity prices has raised concerns about the impact of volatile commodity prices on Latin American countries’ fiscal positions. Using a novel quarterly data set-which includes unique country-specific commodity price indices and a comprehensive measure of...

A push-pull-brake model of capital flows is used to study the effects of fiscal policy changes on private capital flows to emerging Europe during 2000-07. In the model, countercyclical fiscal policy has two opposing effects on capital inflows: (i) a conventional absorptionreducing effect, as a...

This paper empirically explores how fiscal policy (represented by increases in government spending) has asymmetric effects on economic activity at different levels of real interest rates. It suggests that the effect of fiscal policy depends on the level of real rates, since the Ricardian effect...

The Korean authorities having taken decisive and proactive fiscal measures to help stem the fallout from the current global economic and financial crisis, with the size of the fiscal stimulus well-above the average response of other G20 economies. In this context, a key question is how effective...

The paper assesses, using seven structural models used heavily by policymaking institutions, the effectiveness of temporary fiscal stimulus. Models can, more easily than empirical studies, account for differences between fiscal instruments, for differences between structural characteristics of...