The 2005 reform of the EU Stability and Growth Pact has provided leeway for governments to let their fiscal deficit temporarily breach the 3% rule to finance the immediate budgetary cost of structural reform, such as compensation schemes to offset redistributive effects. Against this backdrop,...

This paper examines varies areas of India´s fiscal policy, in particular fiscal discipline, the structure of government spending, the tax system and fiscal federalism. It describes reforms over the past decades which, as part of the overall economic reform agenda, helped lifting the Indian...

Over the next decades, many OECD countries are anticipating large increases in public spending as a result of population ageing and other long-term structural trends. The need to put public finances on a sustainable footing is widely recognised, but progress has been uneven and slow. Some policy...

This paper analyses the monetary and fiscal policy implications of output gap estimates in times of crisis. The widening of output gaps observed in major OECD economies in the wake of the recent crisis has been mainly due to total factor productivity gaps, except in the United States where it...

Turkey recovered swiftly from the global financial crisis but sizeable macroeconomic imbalances arose in the process. High consumer price inflation and a wide current account deficit are sources of vulnerability. Even though below-potential growth helps rebalancing and disinflation, these...

Effective macroeconomic and structural policies helped Turkey bounce back quickly and strongly from the global crisis, with annual growth averaging close to 9% over 2010-11. However, the current account deficit widened to around 10% of GDP in 2011 and consumer price inflation rose to over 10%....

Substantial fiscal consolidation was achieved under the aegis of the 2003 Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management Act. While deficits widened anew in 2008 and 2009, against the backdrop of the global financial and economic crisis, efforts to reduce them have resumed since. To ensure...

The 2005 reform of the EU Stability and Growth Pact has provided leeway for governments to let their fiscal deficit temporarily breach the 3% rule to finance the immediate budgetary cost of structural reform, such as compensation schemes to offset redistributive effects. Against this backdrop,...

This paper examines varies areas of India´s fiscal policy, in particular fiscal discipline, the structure of government spending, the tax system and fiscal federalism. It describes reforms over the past decades which, as part of the overall economic reform agenda, helped lifting the Indian...