We argue that the fiscal multiplier of government purchases is increasing in the spending shock, in contrast to what is assumed in most of the literature. The fiscal multiplier is largest for large positive government spending shocks and smallest for large contractions in government spending. We...

Relying on data for a panel of 90 economies over 1970-2015 and System-GMM estimates, we extend the standard Kuznets-curve empirical framework to investigate how financial development, globalisation and technology affect income inequality. Our findings reveal the presence of significant...

In recent years, an increasing number of countries have began anchoring their fiscal policy frameworks in terms of rules that target the cyclically adjusted or structural (as opposed to actual) balance in an effort to overcome problems of procyclicality and fiscal volatility. The logic for doing...

Fluctuations in commodity prices are an important driver of business cycles in small emerging market economies (EMEs). This paper documents how these fluctuations correlate strongly with the business cycle in EMEs. A commodity sector is then embedded into a multi-country EMEs business cycle...

SVAR models that include a single world price (such as the terms-of-trade) predict that world shocks explain a small fraction of movements in domestic output (typically less than 10 percent). This paper presents an empirical framework in which multiple commodity prices transmit world...

We analyze the determinants of the inflation trends in ten Southeast European (SEE) countries. Global cost-related factors and euro area (EA) inflation developments play an important role in explaining inflation dynamics in SEE countries. Changes in world food and energy prices, together with...