This paper uses a novel macroeconomic framework to identify policy and financing options to help Rwanda achieve its sustainable development goals (SDGs). Under current policies, Rwanda would meet its SDGs right after 2050. Active policies that combine fiscal reforms and higher private sector...

Countries increasingly rely on independent fiscal councils to constrain policymakers' discretion and curb the bias towards excessive deficits and pro-cyclical policies. Since fiscal councils are often recent and heterogeneous across countries, assessing their impact is challenging. Using the...

Growing regional inequality within countries has raised the perception that 'some places and people' are left behind. This has prompted a shift toward inward-looking policies and away from pro-growth reforms. This paper presents novel stylized facts on regional inequality for OECD countries. It...

This paper studies how fiscal rules interact with the intergovernmental fiscal framework to foster fiscal discipline among European subnational governments. We use political variables describing the fiscal attitudes of the central government as instruments to obtain consistent estimates of the...

Distribution neutral fiscal policy refers to a structure of taxes and transfers that keep the income distribution unchanged even after positive or negative shocks to an economy. This is referred to as a Strong Pareto Superior (SPS) allocation which improves the standard Pareto criterion by...

This paper analyzes the relationship between fiscal adjustment and real GDP growth in a panel of 26 transition economies during 1992-2001. Unlike most previous studies using cross-country regressions, the paper finds a positive and statistically significant relationship between fiscal adjustment...

This paper analyzes the experience of 99 advanced and developing economies in restoring fiscal sustainability during 1980 - 2008 after banking crises, which led to large accumulation of public debt. It finds that successful debt reductions have relied chiefly on generation of large primary...

This paper assesses the effects of expenditure composition as well as fiscal adjustment on economic growth in a sample of 39 low-income countries during the 1990s. The paper finds that strong budgetary positions and fiscal consolidation are generally associated with higher economic growth in...