The rules that govern the budget process are important determinants of fiscal outcomes, with potentially important macroeconomic implications. This paper starts with a review of the theoretical underpinnings of the effects of budget processes and the main empirical evidence. After a brief...

The rules that govern the budget process are important determinants of fiscal outcomes, with potentially important macroeconomic implications. This paper starts with a review of the theoretical underpinnings of the effects of budget processes and the main empirical evidence. After a brief...

This paper studies the main social programs of the Colombian public sector. Traditionally, health and education expenditure have played the lion´s share both in the theoretical discussions and in the allocation of social spending in Colombia. I argue that other programs, with more indirect...

This paper evaluates the effects of fiscal policy on investment using a panel of OECD countries. We find a sizeable negative effect of public spending--and in particular of its wage component--on profits and on business investment. This result is consistent with different theoretical models in...

Latin America is volatile--about two to three times as volatile as the industrial economies. It is more volatile than any region other than Africa and the Middle East. Latin America's access to international financial markets is sporadic, and often disappears just when it would be most valuable.

This paper considers budget expansions and adjustments in OECD countries in the last three decades. Our main results are: i) on average fiscal expansions are the results of increases in expenditures, particularly of transfer programs, while contractions are typically due to tax increases; ii)...

In the context of recent research in political economy, this paper addresses the policy problem of fiscal consolidation in terms of three types of issues: 1) the macroeconomic effects of alternative strategies to consolidate; 2) the institutional setups conducive to a consolidation; and 3) the...