This paper gives an outline of the evolution of fiscal policy in Georgia. Starting in the mid-1990s, the authors break the recent Georgian history into two main periods, separated by the Rose Revolution of 2003. The first period was marked by some first efforts to generate and stabilize tax...

Fiscal federalism implies a challenge of holding fiscal discipline at the local level. Recent analyses of fiscal adjustment have addressed the design of fiscal and political institutions for the U.S. states, and have shown how tax limits and anti-deficit rules strengthen immediate shock...

Two literatures in political economy argue that differences in political institutions help explain variation in the fiscal performance of countries. They indentify electoral systems and institutions that structure the formation of the budget as important determinants of the budget deficit. In...

This paper examines the rationale for the imposition of fiscal rules as a way to reduce budgetary imbalances. It presents theoretical arguments for the existence of a ‘fiscal deficit bias’ and the empirical evidence on the economic, political and institutional factors leading to this bias....

Do fiscal rules likely lead to fiscal adjustment, or do they encourage the use of ‘creative accounting’? This question is studied with a model in which fiscal rules are imposed on ‘measured’ fiscal variables, which can differ from ‘true’ variables because there is a margin for...

This paper examines the rationale for the imposition of fiscal rules as a way to reduce budgetary imbalances. It presents theoretical arguments for the existence of a “fiscal deficit bias” and the empirical evidence on the economic, political and institutional factors leading to this bias....

This paper analyzes the theoretical and quantitative implications of optimal capital taxation in the neoclassical growth model with aggregate shocks and incomplete markets. The model features a representative-agent economy with proportional taxes on labor and capital. I first consider the case...

In this paper we argue that allowance for structural breaks (Perron, 1989, Zivot and Andrews, 1992) in the relevant time–series can provide more accurate tests of the present–value borrowing constraint (Hamilton and Flavin, 1986) by accommodating any changes in the processes generating...

This paper reviews the close relationship between business cycle and public fi nances in Colombia. The international evidence shows that cyclical move-ments in output systematically affect the balance of public fi nances. Therefore, the assessment of cy-clical and structural components of the...

This paper reviews the relationship between the business cycle and public finances in Colombia. The evidence shows that cyclical movements in output systematically affect the situation of public finances. Hence, the distinction between the cyclical and permanent (i.e. structural) components of...