The intertemporal budget constraint of the government implies a relationship between a ratio of current liabilities to the primary deficit with future values of inflation, interest rates, GDP and narrow money growth and changes in the primary deficit. This relationship defines a natural measure...

Numerous evaluations show that conditional cash transfer programs change households' investments in their young children, but there are many open questions about how such changes can be sustained after transfers end. This paper analyzes the role of social interactions with local female leaders...

In theory, and under some quite strong assumptions, there exists an important rigorous quantitative relationship among the following four fundamental economic concepts: (1) "wealth"; (2) "income"; (3) "sustainability"; (4) "accounting". These four basic concepts are placed in quotation marks...

Debt sustainability is fundamentally a probabilistic concept: Debt is rarely sustainable with probability one. We propose an index of external debt sustainability that reflects this uncertainty. Namely we construct the index as the probability that, at the current exchange rate, net external...

The Great Recession and the Global Financial Crisis have left many developed countries with low interest rates and high levels of public debt, thus limiting the ability of policymakers to fight the next recession. Whether new fiscal stimulus programs would be jeopardized by these already heavy...

This paper considers two central problems in our statistical frameworks which impair the ability to use wealth to assess economic sustainability or the impacts of economic downturns. Some increases in wealth may reflect increased economic rents—in particular, land and exploitation rents—and...

IMF forecasts and the EU's Fiscal Compact foresee Europe's heavily indebted countries running primary budget surpluses of as much as 5 percent of GDP for as long as 10 years in order to maintain debt sustainability and bring their debt/GDP ratios down to the Compact's 60 percent target. We show...

A dozen countries had weak institutions in 1960 and yet sustained high rates of growth subsequently. We use data on their characteristics early in the growth process to create benchmarks with which to evaluate potential constraints on sustained growth for sub-Saharan Africa. This analysis...

This paper makes two contributions. First, we examine the macroeconomic implications of Puerto Rico's Fiscal Plan that was certified in March 2017 for fiscal years 2017-18 to 2026-27. Second, we perform a Debt Sustainability Analysis (DSA) that incorporates the expected macroeconomic dynamics...