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...

Ethiopia's framework for managing its monetary and foreign exchange policy has relied on some standard instruments of financial repression. Over time, the framework has led to the buildup of large macro-financial imbalances. Exiting financial repression while maintaining macroeconomic stability...

Using a new fiscal dataset for small states, this paper analyzes the link between country size, government size, debt, and economic performance. It finds that on average small states have larger governments and higher public debt. Although there are intrinsic factors that explain why governments...

This paper considers the consequences of international financial market integration for national fiscal and monetary policies that derive from the absence of an international sovereign authority to define and enforce contractual obligations across borders. The sovereign immunity of national...

The recent recovery in Latin America has been impressive but also raises the question whether this represents a fundamental break with the region''s history of boom-bust cycles. The paper traces how this history of macroeconomic volatility and financial crisis over the past century has adversely...

Structural budget-balance rules with countercyclical elements appear well suited to stabilize the macroeconomic volatility of oil-exporting countries and have been used successfully by other commodity exporters. Using a global DSGE model, the efficient design of such rules is found to depend on...

This paper surveys the fiscal landscape of Latin America. It analyzes external and domestic factors that over the years led to the deterioration of the fiscal accounts. It also discusses difficulties that are encountered in pursuing a sound fiscal policy under inflationary conditions. Issues...

This study assesses the redistributive effects of fiscal policy in Mali and Niger. Fiscal policy is poverty increasing in Mali (by 2.4 percentage points) and Niger (2.5 percentage points). This is a result of primarily two factors: indirect taxes (value-added taxes and import duties) and direct...