Government debt has risen substantially in emerging market and developing economies (EMDEs) since the global financial crisis. The current environment of low global interest rates and weak growth may appear to mitigate concerns about elevated debt levels. Considering currently subdued...

In the analysis of public and external debt sustainability the National Bank of the Republic of Macedonia is actively using the IMF's Debt Sustainability Analysis (DSA) framework. The aim of our analysis is to improve the analytical power of the IMF's DSA framework, in the case of Macedonia....

Modern Money Theory (MMT) has generated considerable scrutiny and discussions over the past decade. While it has gained some acceptance in the financial sector and among some politicians, it has come under strong criticisms from all sides of the academic spectrum and from conservative political...

Yet another rescue plan for the European Monetary Union (EMU) is making its way through central Europe, but no one is foolish enough to believe that it will be enough. Greece's finance minister reportedly said that his nation cannot continue to service its debt, and hinted that a 50 percent...

Panel data for seven Latin American countries are used to assess the influence of public indebtedness on public investment in infrastructure in the period 1987-2001. Debt increases are associated with higher public infrastructure investment, an effect that is robust to the inclusion of many...

The paper tests selected long-standing hypotheses about why voters support or oppose fiscal consolidation. Deviating from most of the empirical literature which mainly focuses on cross-sectional and time series evidence, this paper employs data from a public opinion survey that has been...

In this paper we empirically explore the relationship between debt and output in a panel of 72 countries over the period 1970-2014 using a vector autoregression (VAR). We document two puzzling empirical findings that contrast with what is predicted by a standard small open economy model by...

The EU's fiscal rules, set out in the Maastricht Treaty of 1993 and the Stability and Growth Pact of 1997, are anchored to GDP. The debt ceiling and the deficit threshold are set to 60 percent and 3 percent of GDP, respectively. Recently, prominent economists and policymakers, have argued that...

This paper presents a comprehensive cross-country database of fiscal space, broadly defined as the availability of budgetary resources for a government to service its financial obligations. The database covers up to 200 countries over the period 1990-2016, and includes 28 indicators of fiscal...

The implementation of economic reforms under new economic policies in India was associated with a paradigmatic shift in monetary and fiscal policy. While monetary policies were solely aimed at "price stability" in the neoliberal regime, fiscal policies were characterized by the objective of...