The financial crisis and recession have left a legacy of unusually large fiscal deficits and growing sovereign debt levels in most advanced economies. The paper uses recent research from the IMF to throw light on two questions: how much fiscal space is available to advanced countries before they...

We draw on a newly collected historical dataset of fiscal variables for a large panel of countries—to our knowledge, the most comprehensive database currently available—to gauge the degree of fiscal prudence or profligacy for each country over the past several decades....

Romania’s external position continues to improve. Inflation peaked in December 2010, and is now likely to decline. Financial market stress has remained relatively low in recent months. The current account deficit improved from 13½ percent of GDP in 2007 to about 4¼ percent of GDP in...

Implementation of fiscal consolidation by advanced economies in coming years needs to take into account the short and long-run interactions between economic growth and fiscal policy. Many countries must reduce high public debt to GDP ratios that penalize longterm growth. However, fiscal...

This paper assesses the implications of the use of oil revenue for public investment on growth and fiscal sustainability in Cameroon. We develop a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model to analyze the effects of such investment on growth and on the path of key fiscal indicators, such as...

This paper reviews Lithuania’s fiscal consolidation since 2009, assesses the contribution of revenue and expenditure to the consolidation, evaluates the quality of measures, and draws lessons for the future. It finds that, despite having the lowest revenue-to-GDP ratio in the EU, Lithuania’s...

This paper examines the size of the fiscal multiplier values generated in Malaysia. The results show that a government spending shock leads to broad positive economic effects. Although, the effectiveness of fiscal policy alters across macroeconomic states. The estimates show that since the Asian...

Should fiscal consolidations be front-loaded or proceed at a more steady pace, and how does this affect growth? We make an attempt to address this question using a three-step methodology. First, we modify a standard regression of growth on consolidation size to allow speed to affect the...

This paper reconsiders the effects of fiscal policy on long-term interest rates employing a Factor Augmented Panel (FAP) to control for the presence of common unobservable factors. We construct a real-time dataset of macroeconomic and fiscal variables for a panel of OECD countries for the period...

This paper studies the effects of government spending under limited international capital mobility, as featured by most developing countries. While external financing of government debt mitigates the crowding-out effect, it generates real appreciation, which contracts traded output and lowers...