This paper is focused on the options for reducing the U.S. fiscal deficit in the aftermath of the financial crisis. The first part of the paper is devoted to an assessment of the economic outlook and the impact of the financial crisis on the medium-term fiscal balance of the federal government....

This paper develops empirical methods of assessing the sustainability and feasibility of public debt using the No Ponzi Game criterion, using the Philippines as the testing case. Both historical data and forecasts generated by a quarterly macro-econometric model are used in the assessment....

This paper surveys the recent literature on the political economy of fiscal policy, in particular the accumulation of government debt. We examine three possible determinants of fiscal balances: opportunistic behavior by policymakers, heterogeneous fiscal preferences of either voters or...

The United Kingdom employed the McKenna rule to conduct fiscal policy during World War I (WWI) and the interwar period. Named for Reginald McKenna, Chancellor of the Exchequer (1915–16), the McKenna rule committed the United Kingdom to a path of debt retirement, which we show was...

This paper surveys the recent literature on fiscal sustainability, with particular emphasis on emerging market countries. It discusses the main elements that differentiate emerging market countries from industrial countries and then discusses how probabilistic models can help to evaluate fiscal...

In this paper detailed information on the budget institutions of Latin American countries is collected. These institutions are classified on a hierarchical/collegial scale, as a function of the existence of constraints on the deficit and voting rules.

In recent decades the new institutional economics has redrawn attention to the significance of state sponsored and regulated institutions, organisations, laws, rules, customs and culturally conditioned behaviour for the promotion of long term economic development (Menard and Shirley, 2005)....

Recent research in both the social and natural sciences has been devoted to increasing our ability to predict disasters, prepare for them and mitigate their costs. Curiously, we appear to know very little about the fiscal consequences of disasters. The likely fiscal impact of a natural disaster...

This article investigates the effects of macroeconomic policy (monetary and fiscal) on output growth during financial crises characterized by a sudden stop" in net capital inflows in developing and emerging market economies. We investigate 83 sudden stop crises in 77 countries over 1982-2003...

This paper investigates empirically the relationship between the pattern of fiscal policy and the demand for international reserves in developing countries, and how this relationship is associated with political risk and conditional access to global capital markets. It finds evidence that for...