Despite sustained economic growth and rapid poverty reductions, income inequality remains stubbornly high in many low-income developing countries. This pattern is a concern as high levels of inequality can impair the sustainability of growth and macroeconomic stability, thereby also limiting...

This paper will present the Modern Money Theory approach to government finance. In short, a national government that chooses its own money of account, imposes a tax in that money of account, and issues currency in that money of account cannot face a financial constraint. It can make all payments...

The short note on the 2019 President's Budget attempts to assess the proposed shift from obligation-based to cash-based budgeting and its implications on the 2019 proposed national budget. In the process, it aims to inform policy deliberations on Senate Bill 1761 (formerly Senate Bill 1450),...

We examine the link between the quality of fiscal governance and access to market-based external finance. Stronger fiscal governance is associated with improvements in several indicators of market access, including a higher likelihood of issuing sovereign bonds and having a sovereign credit...

Published in late 2017, the Italian medium-term fiscal plan aims to achieve structural balance by 2020, although concrete, high-quality measures to meet the target are yet to be specified. This paper seeks to contribute to the discussion by (i) assessing spending patterns to identify areas for...

This paper studies the impact on growth, welfare, and government debt of fiscal reform packages in a theoretical model drawing together three key features of the endogenous growth literature: (i) investment in technology (in the form of human capital) offsets diminishing marginal productivity of...