This paper analyzes Germany's fiscal policy position. Half of GDP passes through the hands of government, a high debt to GDP ratio limits the maneuvering, and the revenue sharing mechanism prevents a competitive federalism. Most importantly for the future, the federal finance minister has to...

This paper evaluates optimal public investment and fiscal policy for countries characterized by limited tax and debt capacities. We study a non stochastic CRS endogenous growth model where public expenditure is an input in the production process, in countries where distortions and limited...

This paper evaluates optimal public investment and fiscal policy for countries characterized by limited tax and debt capacities. We study a non stochastic CRS endogenous growth model where public expenditure is an input in the production process, in countries where distortions and limited...

This paper studies the cross-country variation of the fiscal stimulus and the exchange rate adjustment propagated by the global crisis of 2008-9, identifying the role of economic structure in accounting for the heterogeneity of response. We find that greater de facto fiscal space prior to the...

The end of the great moderation has profound implications on the assessment of fiscal sustainability. The pertinent issue goes beyond the increase in stock of public debt/GDP induced by the global recession, to include the perspective that the sustainability of a given public debt/GDP depends on...

We define the notion of 'de facto fiscal space' of a country as the outstanding public debt relative to the de facto tax base, where the latter measures the realized tax collection, averaged across several years to smooth for business cycle fluctuations. We apply this concept to account for the...

We examine how financial expansion and contraction cycles affect the broader economy through their impact on 8 real economic sectors in a panel of 28 countries over 1960-2005, paying particular attention to large, or sharp, contractions and magnifying and mitigating factors. Overall, the...

We define the notion of 'de facto fiscal space' of a country as the inverse of the outstanding public debt relative to the de facto tax base, where the latter measures the realized tax collection, averaged across several years to smooth for business cycle fluctuations. We apply this concept to...

This paper studies the patterns of fiscal stimuli in the OECD countries propagated by the global crisis. Overall, we find that the USA net fiscal stimulus was modest relative to peers, despite it being the epicenter of the crisis, and having access to relatively cheap funding of its twin...