There is a large literature on how the sharing of revenue between different levels of government and the design of intergovernmental transfer schemes affect sub-national finances. Using a panel of OECD countries during 1980-2005, this paper tests for: i) the presence of a stable long-run...

During the economic and financial crisis, fiscal positions across the OECD countries deteriorated sharply. This raises the question of what level of primary deficit would ensure long-term sustainability and what degree of consolidation is needed. The purpose of this paper is to gauge the scale...

The economic and financial crisis was the catalyst for a fiscal crisis that engulfs many OECD countries. In most countries, budget deficits soared as a result of the economic slump, weaker revenues and the policy response to the crisis. Consolidating the public finances is an important challenge...

This paper assesses how and in what circumstances, fiscal consolidations are affected by monetary conditions, using data covering 24 OECD countries over the past 25 years, Focusing on fiscal consolidation “episodes”, it is found that these tend to occur when large budget deficits threaten...

In this paper the OECD’s interlink model is used to explore several possible channels through which a narrowing of the US current account deficit could occur. The shocks considered include dollar depreciation, fiscal consolidation, and an improvement in the non-price competitiveness of US...

This paper was prepared in the OECD Economics Department as a contribution to the Organisation-wide study entitled, “Towards a New Global Age”. It examines macro-structural economic developments in and between OECD and non-OECD economies, the economic linkages and a number of structural...

This paper describes a number of alternative medium-term scenarios for the OECD economies and related policy stimulations using the OECD world model INTERLINK. The starting point of the analysis is a reference scenario to 2000 featuring a general recovery of the OECD economies to steady state...

This paper reviews the arguments in favor of excluding investment from fiscal policy constraints (the adoption of a “golden rule”). The paper starts by reviewing the goals and motivations of fiscal policy rules. From this analysis, it is clear that answering the question of whether...

This paper analyses two factors which may cause cyclically-adjusted budget balances to give a misleading picture of underlying fiscal trends. It first explores the implications of recent large asset-market related fluctuations in government revenues for the measurement of structural budget...

This paper examines various aspects of fiscal policy in Slovenia, in particular fiscal consolidation, pension reform, efficiency of government spending and the tax system. It finds that Slovenia belongs to the group of new EU member countries, which have given in the past a high priority to...