Using data for advanced economies, this paper investigates whether factors identified in the theoretical and empirical literature explain the effectiveness of fiscal policy in responding to recessions. The results are informative about the fiscal response to recessions but provide only a partial...

This paper reviews Lebanon''s ability to manage financial pressures following severe shocks despite its large public debt overhang and significant external vulnerabilities. Based on interviews with market participants in Beirut and London, the paper concludes that Lebanon''s ability to weather...

The macroeconomic implications of a pension reform that substitutes a high-return fully-funded system for a low-return pay-as-you-go system are discussed in an overlapping generations, neoclassical growth model. With forward-looking individuals, a debt-financed reform worsens the current...

We develop an early-warning model of sovereign debt crises. A country is defined to be in a debt crisis if it is classified as being in default by Standard & Poor''s, or if it has access to nonconcessional IMF financing in excess of 100 percent of quota. By means of logit and binary recursive...

Der Saldo der deutschen Leistungsbilanz hat sich nach langjährigen Überschüssen im Zuge der Vereinigung erstmals wieder negativiert. Es wird ein theoretisches Modell spezifiziert, das den Elastizitäten-, den monetaristischen und den Absorptionsansatz umfaßt. Zusätzlich wird die private...

Labour market flexibility is the key to sustainable economic development in advanced economies. The factor price frontier is used to analyse labour market adjustment in Ireland from the sixties to the present. The theoretical and empirical analysis lend support to the wideheld belief that...

The German current account balance has moved from surplus to deßcit in the course of unificalion. A theorelical model for the current account, encompassing the elaslicities, the monetary, and the absorptions approach, is set up and lested for Germany and the United States, using cointegration...