This Selected Issues paper explores the determinants of Greece’s potential output, an exercise that could shed light on its current cyclical position, as well as on its medium-term growth prospects. To that end, a production function is estimated, with capital and labor as factors of...

This paper reviews the uneven record of fiscal performance in the states of the former Soviet Union since independence. Deficits have come down rapidly, an important contribution to stabilization. Given, however, the unexpectedly severe revenue decline and limited financing, the stabilization...

Assessing the sustainability of a given fiscal policy is especially important for countries that depend on income from exhaustible resources. Political and growth pressures may push governments to raise expenditure when revenue from exhaustible resources rises, but cutting outlays when price...

This paper examines the rationale for the imposition of fiscal rules as a way to reduce budgetary imbalances. It presents theoretical arguments for the existence of a “fiscal deficit bias” and the empirical evidence on the economic, political and institutional factors leading to this bias....

This paper reviews lessons in fiscal consolidation for the former Soviet Union that emerge from the experience of Central and Eastern European economies in transition. A central lesson is the need to support the macroeconomic stabilization with a front-loaded fiscal adjustment. Consistent with...

The IMF MULTIMOD model is used to trace the economic impact of a 20 percent reduction in world military expenditures. GDP falls in the short run, however private consumption and investment rise, leading to an increase in GDP in the medium and long run. The estimated gains to economic welfare are...

Fiscal discipline is essential to improve and sustain economic performance, maintain macroeconomic stability, and reduce vulnerabilities. Discipline is especially important if countries, industrial as well as developing, are to successfully meet the challenges, and reap the benefits, of economic...

The purpose of this paper is to assess whether expenditure decentralization has contributed to weakening fiscal performance in Europe. Using a panel of EU15 countries for the period 1995-2011, we estimate three econometric models and ask the following questions: (1) does the form of spending...

With fiscal adjustment proceeding quickly in Bulgaria and given the weak economic growth environment, there is keen interest in making the budget composition more growth friendly. This paper quantifies the short-term impact of fiscal policy on economic activity in Bulgaria using econometric and...

We examine how the cost of corporate credit varies around fiscal consolidations aimed at reducing government debt. Using a new dataset on fiscal consolidations and syndicated corporate loan data, we find that loan spreads increase with fiscal consolidations, especially for small firms, domestic...