This paper investigates the relation between growth forecast errors and planned fiscal consolidation during the crisis. We find that, in advanced economies, stronger planned fiscal consolidation has been associated with lower growth than expected, with the relation being particularly strong,...

In a number of oil producing countries, oil revenue accounts for the majority of government revenue, but is expected to be depleted in a relatively short time frame. Ensuring that fiscal policy is on a sustainable path is thus a high priority, but political and social adjustment costs create...

This paper explores the causes of India''s productivity surge around 1980, more than a decade before serious economic reforms were initiated. Trade liberalization, expansionary demand, a favorable external environment, and improved agricultural performance did not play a role. We find evidence...

Growth and inflation in Turkey have been volatile over the last two decades. It would, therefore, be useful to identify indicators that anticipate economic conditions and inflation. This paper investigates the predictive performance of economic indicators for inflation and real output growth in...

We estimate the respective contributions of institutions, geography, and trade in determining cross-country income levels using recently developed instruments for institutions and trade. Our results indicate that the quality of institutions ""trumps"" everything else. Controlling for...

Large price changes in industries affected by the COVID-19 pandemic have caused erratic fluctuations in the U.S. headline inflation rate. This paper compares alternative approaches to filtering out the transitory effects of these industry price changes and measuring the underlying or core level...

There is no consensus on how strongly the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) has stimulated U.S. private fixed investment. Some argue that the business tax provisions spurred investment by cutting the cost of capital. Others see the TCJA primarily as a windfall for shareholders. We find that U.S....

This paper proposes a new method of estimating the Taylor rule with a time-varying implicit inflation target and a time-varying natural rate of interest. The inflation target and the natural rate are modeled as random walks and are estimated using maximum likelihood and the Kalman filter. I...