This paper studies whether changes in the composition of public spending affect the macroeconomic consequences of fiscal consolidations. Based on a sample of 44 developing countries and 26 advanced economies during 1980-2019, results show that while fiscal consolidations tend to be on average,...

This paper studies the cyclical properties of two key expenditure categories (current and public investment spending) during the different phases of the business cycle (good times and bad times). Anecdotal evidence suggests that policymakers usually cannot resist the temptation of spending more...

Fiscal rules have gained popularity as tools to strengthen debt sustainability by constraining policy discretion. However, their track record in the case of emerging markets is mixed, as setting up a fiscal rule has been no guarantee of debt stabilization. International experience and empirical...

Sudden Stops in net capital flows can be prevented when the actions of domestic investors offset a reduction in foreign lending. This paper presents evidence that while sudden stops in gross inflows-i.e., a tightening of the external borrowing constraint-are associated with global conditions and...

Sudden stops in net capital flows can be prevented if domestic investors either repatriate foreign-held assets or roll over their local asset holdings when foreign investors stop lending or sell off their local asset holdings. This paper presents evidence showing that domestic factors such as...

Financial stability is an important policy objective since crises are associated with big economic, social, and political costs. Promoting stability requires preventing 'sudden stops' in capital flows, which are events in which foreign financing abruptly disappears. This paper contributes to the...

In recent years, an increasing number of countries have began anchoring their fiscal policy frameworks in terms of rules that target the cyclically adjusted or structural (as opposed to actual) balance in an effort to overcome problems of procyclicality and fiscal volatility. The logic for doing...

Do voters punish governments that introduce fiscal "austerity" measures? If so, does voter response vary according to the design (composition) of fiscal adjustments? What determines the timing of fiscal consolidations? The empirical literature on the political economy of fiscal adjustments,...

More than a decade of energy and transport subsidies have weakened Argentina's fiscal capacity. Following the 2001 crisis, public services tariffs were frozen in an attempt to offset the negative effects on households' real purchasing power. However, these subsidies steadily increased over the...

El objetivo de este estudio es analizar y brindar evidencia sobre el impacto distributivo del gasto público social en educación y cultura en la Provincia de Buenos Aires para el año 2010, utilizando para ello la Encuesta Anual de Hogares Urbanas (EAHU) realizada durante el tercer trimestre de...