We analyze the US public sector balance sheet and project it forward under the assumption that current policies remain in place. We first document the history of the balance sheet and its components since World War II, with a detailed account of its evolution during and after the global...

The Fiscal Theory of the Price Level (FTPL) is the claim that, in a popular class of theoretical models, the price level is sometimes determined by fiscal policy rather than monetary policy. The models where this claim has been established assume that all decisions are made by an...

Structural indicators of a country''s fiscal position are regularly used as estimates of both discretionary changes in fiscal policy and the effect of fiscal policy on aggregate demand. This paper looks at such indicators and evaluates, from a theoretical standpoint and from empirical case...

We construct a new, comprehensive instrument-level database of sovereign debt for 18 advanced and emerging countries over the period 1913-46. The database contains data on amounts outstanding for some 3,800 individual debt instruments as well as associated qualitative information, including...

How do policy communications on future f iscal targets af fect market expectations and beliefs about the future conduct of f iscal policy? In this paper, we develop indicators of f iscal credibility that quantify the degree to which policy announcements anchor expectations, based on the...

Adoption of fiscal rules and fiscal councils continued to increase globally over the last decades based on two new global datasets. During the pandemic, fiscal frameworks were put to test. The widespread use of escape clauses was one of the novelties in this crisis, which helped provide policy...

Ensuring that state-owned enterprises (SOEs) are efficient and managed prudently is important for economic and social reasons. It is also crucial to contain fiscal risks and reduce the burden on taxpayers from recurrent and large bailouts. Governments need to develop stronger capacity to monitor...

Current fiscal transparency and reporting practices in India place it behind most peer G20 economies, implying that policy makers are lacking critical data to ground their fiscal and other economic planning decisions. The increasing use of off-budget financing at the central government level in...

This paper reviews the Public Financial Management (PFM) reform stategy for 16 Pacific Island Countries (PICs) during the period 2010-2020. The strategy was endorsed by the finance and economic ministers of the region (FEMM) in 2010. The paper analyzes more than 30 PEFA assessments carried out...

We examine the link between the quality of fiscal governance and access to market-based external finance. Stronger fiscal governance is associated with improvements in several indicators of market access, including a higher likelihood of issuing sovereign bonds and having a sovereign credit...