This paper studies the patterns of inflation skewness in 56 countries. Monthly data suggests that inflation is positively skewed. We investigate linkages between skewness and non-linearity, showing that concavity (convexity) will lead to negative (positive) skewness if the independent variable...

The implications of a large public debt for the implementation of capital controls for an economy where tax revenue collection is costly are examined. Conditions are analyzed under which policymakers will resort to capital controls to reduce the cost of recycling domestic public debt. The...

This paper investigates the behavior of public debt in countries forming a union (as outlined, e.g., by the Maastricht treaty). We consider a federal union of states where the center has limited control over the spending patterns of the union members, and where the union members' behavior has...

We define the notion of a 'de facto fiscal space' of a country as the inverse of the tax-years it would take to repay the public debt. Specifically, we measure the outstanding public debt relative to the de facto tax base, where the latter measures the realized tax collection, averaged across...

Projections indicate the US Federal debt held by the public may exceed 70–100% of GDP within 10years. In many respects, the temptation to inflate away some of this debt burden is similar to that at the end of World War II. In 1946, the debt ratio was 108.6%. Inflation reduced this ratio by...