This study examines the macroeconomic determinants of survey inflation expectations in Brazil since the adoption of inflation targeting in 1999. The results suggest that the inflation targeting framework has helped anchor expectations, with the dispersion of inflation expectations declining...

Recent work on the political economy of fiscal policy has asked how budgetary institutions affect fiscal outcomes. But what determines the budgetary institutions? In this paper I consider one such institution: the executive veto. A simple theoretical framework predicts that jurisdictions with...

The common-pool problem is a central issue in the relationship between the political structure of jurisdictions and the size of public spending. Models predict that, other things being equal, greater political districting of a jurisdiction raises the scale of government. This paper presents new...

This paper presents evidence on the political and economic determinants of social sector spending from a panel dataset. The principal finding is that democratization in countries, as measured by within-country variation in subjective indices of democracy, is a significant predictor of government...

By the end of 2007, Chile''s total factor productivity was lower than ten years earlier, a performance that contrasted sharply with the previous decade, when productivity grew by a cumulative 30 percent. This paper assesses productivity trends in Chile, by decomposing productivity into...

This paper assesses Brazil''s growth performance from a long-term perspective, using crosscountry and panel estimation techniques, building on the vast empirical literature on growth. The empirical evidence presented in this paper confirms that macroeconomic stability and several reforms have...