This study examines the influence of fiscal councils on public opinion regarding fiscal issues. Using a survey-framing experiment on a representative sample of 900 inhabitants of the Czech Republic, the study evaluates how the framing of a message regarding the negative effects of rising...

In the context of the increasing budget deficit and public debt, on one hand, and the need to restore economic growth without compromising financial stability and fiscal sustainability on long term, on the other hand, governments must undertake severe measures concentrated especially on...

VAT reform constituted the most important tax policy action China took during the global financial crisis in 2008-9. If China had had a more typical tax structure, this specific policy instrument (as well as certain others) would not have been available. Conversely, because of the idiosyncrasies...

In the last decade of XX century, has expanded the area of capital movements, which included the former socialist countries. Thus, the countries that are attracting some of the centers of the capital and at the same time, participate in the export of capital, it is impossible not to have engaged...

Macroeconomic policy in Latin America underwent significant changes in the late nineties. Brazil is an outstanding example: inflation targeting was introduced in 1999 and a new fiscal policy framework was set up in 2000 with the Fiscal Responsibility Law. However, two elements of the Brazilian...

During times of economic crises, the public policy response is to abandon basic economic thinking and engage in ‘emergency economic’ policies. We explore how the current financial crisis was in part caused by previous emergency economic measures. We then investigate the theoretical...

This paper discusses the dynamic response of employment, average hours and real wages to monetary, government spending and net taxes shocks in the UK for the 1970 Q1-2003 Q1 period. The response of labour market variables to a monetary policy shock are in line with economic theory and previous...

The Broad Economic Policy Guidelines contain the answers of the European Commission and the governments of the EU-member countries to the European growth and employment problems. These guidelines have been the major EU-economic policy concept for around ten years now. They can be seen as a...

This document analyzes the patterns of fiscal and monetary policy in five economies of the Latin American Southern Cone (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay) during four episodes of international crises: 1994, 1997-1999, 2001 and 2008. In contrast with earlier episodes when most...

This paper seeks to identify the most promising fiscal strategy to boost long-term economic growth in Argentina and quantify its effects. To this end, the authors updated a growth-diagnostics study for Argentina and corroborated that low appropriability of social returns and insufficient public...