The U.S. population is becoming increasingly urban and has gradually shifted to the south and west. Policy restrictions have played a role in preventing dynamic areas expanding, and when they do expand it can be through low-density housing sprawl. Land use restrictions and a sluggish housing...

Colombia has engaged in a sustained process of fiscal decentralisation over the past decades. This paper analyses three aspects of fiscal performance for Colombia’s departments. First, it studies the sustainability aspects of subnational finances by estimating a fiscal reaction function....

There is no single “best” indicator for analysing general government debt. This paper examines the various issues in defining and measuring debt, and explores other data which could be useful, both within and beyond the general government debt concept, to better track and analyse fiscal...

The recent euro area sovereign debt crisis has shown the importance of market reactions for the sustainability of debt. The objective of this paper is to calculate endogenous government debt limits given the markets assessment of the probability to default. The estimated primary balance reaction...

The sharp rise in debt experienced by most OECD countries raises questions about the prudent debt level countries should target. It also raises questions about the fiscal frameworks needed to reach them and to accommodate cyclical fluctuations along the path towards a prudent debt target. The...

Fiscal constitutions comprise the set of rules and frameworks guiding fiscal policy that are enshrined in a country’s fundamental laws. This paper compares the fiscal constitutions of 15 federal countries by empirically assessing five building blocks: 1) the power of sub-national governments...

Since 1995 when OECD began conducting Economic Surveys of the Russian Federation many policy recommendations relating to structural reform and framework conditions have been made. This paper is an update of an earlier paper that described actions taken up to October 2011 (Vaziakova et al.,...

This working paper explores avenues to improve public sector efficiency in Latvia, a catching-up and ageing economy where spending needs are large. Ensuring that spending allocated to core services (e.g. education, healthcare) is adequate to achieve convergence of policy outcomes to OECD upper...