Until the early 1990s, the discussions on fiscal policy primarily centered on the functions of economic stabilization, income redistribution and resource allocation. Long-term growth was not usually viewed as an end itself, and fiscal policy was often not sufficiently tailored to the different...

Fiscal consolidation is used as a synonym for austerity much as debt restructuring is used as a euphemism for partial repudiation. Inside the political arena of international economics, the nomenclature of government officials in policy debates adopts colorful terminology, such as healthy public...

This paper provides a comprehensive empirical assessment of the relation between the cyclicality of fiscal policy, output volatility, and economic growth, using a large cross-section of 88 countries over the period 1960 to 2004. Identification of the effects of (endogenous) cyclical fiscal...

This paper responds to the development policy debate involving the World Bank and the IMF on the use of fiscal policy not only for economic stabilization but also to promote economic growth and increase per capita income. A key issue in this debate relates to the effect of the composition of...

To the layman, the upward trend in European unemployment is related to the slowdown in economic growth. We argue that the layman's view is correct. The increase in European unemployment and the slowdown in economic growth are related because they stem from a common cause: an excessively high...

How is a developing country affected by its government's ability to borrow in international markets? We examine the dynamics of a country's growth, consumption, and sovereign debt, assuming that the government's objective is to maximize short-term, typically wasteful, expenditures. Sovereign...

This paper puts the original Reinhart-Rogoff dataset, made public by Herndon et al. (2013), to a formal econometric test to pin down debt thresholds endogenously. We show that the nonlinear relation from debt to growth is not very robust. Taken with a pinch of salt, our results suggest, however,...

Notwithstanding a very strong economic performance over the past decade or so, Poland’s per capita income is substantially lower in comparison with the United States and per capita income growth will be sharply slowing down over the coming decades under the scenario of gradual policy changes...