The quest for political support drives to upward deviations from forecasted public deficits when i) budget procedures are soft, ii) breaking promises involving higher expenditures and lower taxes is costly in political terms, and iii) ex–post control by voters and political opposition is...

In this paper causality between taxes and expenditures is reexamined, suggesting that electoral cycle may be a relevant explicative factor. Using a data set from a wide sample of Spanish municipalities, I test if causal relationships between budgetary variables is effectively affected by the...

This paper reviews Brazil's growth performance over the last quarter of a century and discusses the main determinants of a pick-up in growth since the mid-1990s. Emphasis is placed on the policy pay-offs associated with a consolidation of macroeconomic adjustment, which is a pre-condition for...

The bulk of recent literature on foreign exchange interventions has overlooked the potential interdependencies that may exist between these operations and the conduct of monetary policy. This is the case even under inflation targeting and especially in emerging-market economies, because central...

This paper looks at how individual preferences for the allocation of government spending change along the life cycle. Using the Life in Transition Survey II for 34 countries of Europe and Central Asia, we find that older individuals are less likely to support a rise in government outlays on...

Indonesia went through a process of fiscal decentralization in 2001 involving the devolution of several policymaking and service delivery functions to the subnational tiers of government (provinces and districts). This process is likely to have affected regional patterns of urbanization, because...