The paper provides evidence that fiscal rules can limit the political budget cycle. It focuses on the application of the Italian fiscal rule at the sub-national level over the period 2004-2006 and shows that: 1) municipalities are subject to political budget cycles in capital spending; 2) the...

The recent slowdown in the U.S. economy has led to state and local government tax increases and expenditure cuts that have lowered aggregate demand, in contrast to earlier downturns when the sector provided significant automatic stabilizers. Several explanations for this change are examined,...

Government spending on infrastructure has recently increased sharply in many emerging-market economies. This paper examines the mechanism through which public infrastructure spending affects the dynamics of the real exchange rate. Using a two-sector dependent open economy model with...

India's real GDP growth slipped substantially after the North Atlantic financial crisis. Return to a sustained high growth trajectory is feasible but it will need much more focused attention to the revival of manufacturing and to the acceleration of investment in transport and infrastructure....

Infrastructure bottlenecks have been identified as a key obstacle to growth affecting productivity and market efficiency, and hindering domestic integration and export performance. This paper assesses the state of Brazil's infrastructure, in light of past investment trends and various quality...

Mozambique has great potential in natural gas reserves and if liquefied/commercialized the sum of taxes andother fiscal revenue from natural gas will, at its peak, reach roughly one third of total fiscal revenue. Recent developments in the natural resource sector have triggered a fresh round of...