The objective of the study is to analyze the cyclicality of Fiscal Policy among Institutions (Economic and Political) and governance indicators from 1980-2010 in major South Asian Countries. Fiscal policy is a major source in the hands of the government to achieve higher level of economic...

Latvia’s economy continues to recover, but the worsening global outlook is likely to hurt growth. Implementation of the program has made the economy more robust to shocks, but risks remain that could derail the recovery and the goal of euro adoption. Spillovers from the euro area crisis...

Fiscal problems have long been considered a central feature of financial--that is, currency, debt, and banking--crises. This paper addresses four questions: What are the fiscal causes of crises? Which fiscal vulnerability indicators help to predict crises? Can fiscal variables explain the...

Motivated by the highly-unionized public sectors, the high public shares in total em- ployment, and the public sector wage premia observed in Europe, this paper examines the importance of public sector unions for macroeconomic theory. The model gen- erates cyclical behavior in hours and wages...