Key medium– and longer–term fiscal issues faced by transition economies are reviewed, including government solvency and the sustainability of the fiscal–financial–monetary program. The paper aims to assist the design and implementation of future Fund programs and to contribute to the...

Are generational accounts informative about the effect of the budget on the intergenerational distribution of resources and on aggregate saving? First, the usefulness of generational accounts lives or dies with the strict life-cycle model of household consumption. Second, even if the life-cycle...

This article argues that conventional approaches to the treatment of seasonality in econometric investigation are often inappropriate. A more appropriate technique is to allow all regression coefficients to vary with the season, but to constrain them to do so in a smooth fashion. A Bayesian...