This paper analyses a large public investment in a construction of a hydropower plant in Lesotho and its implications on the growth and debt sustainability. The paper employs an open economy dynamic general equilibrium model to assess the benefits of a large public investment through...

Libya is highly dependent on exhaustible and volatile hydrocarbon resources, which constitute the bulk of government revenues. Although resource wealth provides the means to promote socio-economic development, procyclical fiscal policies threaten macroeconomic stability as well as fiscal...

Libya is highly dependent on exhaustible and volatile hydrocarbon resources, which constitute the bulk of government revenues. Although resource wealth provides the means to promote socio-economic development, procyclical fiscal policies threaten macroeconomic stability as well as fiscal...

Do the sovereign wealth funds of Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan promote the sustainable use of government oil revenues? We review the operational rules and performance of the two funds and compare them to Norway’s Government Pension Fund Global. The key challenges are to stabilize government...

This paper tackles the complex issue of how buyers and sellers within a domestic carbon credit system designed to include regenerating indigenous forest would optimally design contracts for trades of the new good, "carbon sink credits". The paper begins by briefly defining the constraints that...

We analyse the adjustment of public education spending in response to rapidly decreasing student cohorts in East Germany where birth rates collapsed after German reunification. Previous results from the literature based on data from more stable demographic periods suggest that public resources...

On top of the sovereign debt crisis in the European Union, demographic change is exerting enormous pressure on public finances. We analyse four policy options: lowering pension benefits, increasing labour market participation of the native population, immigration and participation of older...

This paper describes how stochastic population forecasts are used to inform and analyze policies related to government spending on the elderly, mainly in the context of the industrialized nations. The paper first presents methods for making probabilistic forecasts of demographic rates,...

This paper builds on institutional analysis to generate new conclusions about the economic viability of federalism. It does so by suggesting that Weingast's seminal model of marketpreserving federalism falls short of accounting for the poor fiscal performance of multitiered systems in the...

Many economies in East and Southeast Asia are progressing toward becoming aging or aged societies. The impacts of this demographic transition are multifaceted and far-reaching and include declining tax revenues, leading to fiscal imbalances, and possible increases in government expenditures for...