We test the relationship between the current account and fiscal policy for a group of small open developing economies with fixed exchange rates some of which are oil exporters. Specifically, we test the viewpoint of a Ricardian infinite-horizon representative agent model in which lower public...

Large external imbalances have become a policy concern. This study investigates the determinants of external balances for regions within a single country — Canadian provinces — as well as for a sample of 18 OECD countries. External balance adjustment may differ for provinces since there are...

Large current account deficits have become a policy concern. The trend toward international capital market liberalization has improved access to foreign pools of saving which has allowed the expansion of current account deficits. There are minimal barriers to capital flows within a country, so...

We compare the long-term output and current account effects of pension reforms that increase the retirement age with those of reforms that cut pension benefits, conditional on reforms achieving similar fiscal targets. We show the presence of a policy trade-off. Pension reforms that increase the...

Using a central bank legislation database, this paper documents and analyzes worldwide institutional arrangements for central bank lending to the government and identifies international practices. Key findings are: (i) in most advanced countries, central banks do not finance government...

From the perspective of the intertemporal balance model, we investigate how capital mobility affects the current account for six developing countries from the mid-1970s to the end of 1999. We find that after 1989, when capital liberalisation became prevalent, the causal relationship from the...

This paper offers a coherent empirical analysis of the determinants of the real exchange rate, the current account, and the net foreign assets position in low income countries. The paper focuses on indicators specific to low income countries, such as the quality of policies and institutions, the...

A new aggregation scheme used to measure the sources of fiscal financing of indebted countries suggests that there was a fundamental improvement in the seniority of domestic debt at the expense of foreign bank debt during the late 1980s. We argue that this was the revenue maximizing response of...