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...

We construct economic policy uncertainty (EPU) indexes for a number of Latin American (LA) economies (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, Venezuela) and the region as a whole, based on reports in the Spanish press. Our measures are comparable across countries. We study the...

The current state budget crisis in the EU and the numerous futile efforts to solve the problem has brought back the fraction of people that argument in favour of an exit strategy of Germany from the European monetary union (EMU) or even the break-up of the EMU in total. This paper investigates...

In 1977 Sri Lanka was the first of the South Asian countries to decisively move away from the protectionist import-substitution trade policies that for many years had damaged their economic efficiency and hobbled their economic growth. Albeit with back-tracking episodes, Sri Lanka’s...