We study whether multiyear fiscal adjustment plans in 17 OECD countries during 1980–2011 have been associated with market pressure. We find that only a fraction of the consolidations occurred under market pressure, suggesting that market pressure is important but not the main element...

We study whether multiyear fiscal adjustment plans in 17 OECD countries during 1980-2011 have been associated with market pressure. We find that only a third (34 percent) of the consolidations occurred under market pressure, suggesting that market pressure is important but not the main element...

Many international macroeconomic models link the real exchange rate to a ratio of marginal utilities. We examine this link empirically, allowing the marginal utility of consumption to depend on government expenditure, real money balances, or external habit. We also consider two environments with...

Over the past two years, ongoing political transitions in many Arab countries have led to social unrest and an economic downturn. This paper examines comparable historical episodes of political instability to derive implications for the near- and medium-term economic outlook in the Arab...

We examine episodes of large gross foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows - surges - at the sectoral level in emerging market economies. We find that surges in the financial sector, unlike surges in the non-financial sectors, are associated with boom-bust cycles in GDP and expansions of credit...

The Bolivian puzzle is high and persistent financial dollarization notwithstanding deep macroeconomic stabilization that achieved stable and low inflation and the regulations encouraging domestic currency deposits. We analyze traditional and new approaches to explain dollarization in Bolivia. We...

This paper reconsiders the effects of fiscal policy on long-term interest rates and sovereign spreads employing a Factor Augmented Panel (FAP) to control for the presence of common unobservable factors. We construct a real-time dataset of macroeconomic and fiscal variables for a panel of OECD...