The paper compares fiscal cyclicality across regions and countries from 1960 to 2016. It finds that more than half of 170 countries analyzed in seven regions had, in more recent years, limited fiscal space, and that their fiscal policy was either cyclical or procyclical. This was particularly...

The unprecedented rise and persistence of large-scale budget deficits in many developed and developing nations during the past three decades has caused great concern. The widespread presence of such deficits has proved difficult to explain. Their emergence in otherwise diverse nations defies...

This paper aims at studying the legal aspects of the European Union (EU)'s fiscal policy, analyzing the statute of fiscal responsibility legal framework, the different measures undertaken in the last years with respect to European trends in fiscal governance and their implications for challenges...

The Great Recession and the COVID-19 pandemic shared two of its critical macroeconomic consequences: a major increase in world uncertainty and great stress on public finances. In this paper, we show that not only these are not independent phenomena but, on the contrary, world economic...

We use sovereign debt rating estimations from Afonso, Gomes and Rother (2009, 2010) for Fitch, Moody's, and Standard & Poor's, to assess to what extent the recent fiscal imbalances are being reflected on the sovereign debt notations. We use macro and fiscal data up to 2009, and macro and fiscal...

This paper reviews and summarizes the literature that has concentrated on budget consolidations and their fiscal and economic effects. The issue of fiscal adjustments has again gained importance due to the recent economic crisis and the resulting fiscal imbalances. The existing literature shows...