This paper identifies leading indicators of fiscal crises based on a large sample of countries at different stages of development over 1970-2015. Our results are robust to different methodologies and sample periods. Previous literature on early warning sistems (EWS) for fiscal crises is scarce...

This paper studies the impact on growth, welfare, and government debt of fiscal reform packages in a theoretical model drawing together three key features of the endogenous growth literature: (i) investment in technology (in the form of human capital) offsets diminishing marginal productivity of...

According to U.N. estimates, low-income countries will have to increase their annual public spending by up to 30 percent of GDP to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), raising the question of whether they can do it all. This paper develops a new metric of fiscal space in low-income...

This note discusses how to design subnational fiscal rules, including how to select them and calibrate them. It expands on the guidance provided at the national level on rule selection and calibration in IMF (2018a) and IMF (2018b). Thinking on subnational fiscal rules is still evolving,...

This paper employs a two-country New Keynesian DSGE model to assess the macroeconomic impact of the changes in monetary policy frameworks and the fiscal support in the U.S. and euro area during the pandemic. Moving from a previous target of “below, but close to 2 percent” to a formal...

Happiness research is a new, rapidly growing and provocative aspect of economic science. In fact, there are now over 1,800 published papers on the subject, and it might be said that the ‘dismal science’ has come to be obsessed with happiness. This research provides a number of interesting...