A framework is developed for macroeconomic policy analysis in four countries of Central Europe (CE) in transition to EU membership (Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia). A Multi-Annual Fiscal Adjustment Strategy (MAFAS) and a Pre-Pegging Exchange Rate Regime (PPERR) appropriate for...

The Maastricht Treaty on Europe Union features an Excessive Deficit Procedure limiting the freedom to borrow of governments participating in the European monetary union. One justification is to prevent states from over- borrowing and demanding a bailout which could divert the European Central...

A rough consensus has emerged that states with proportional representation systems are" likely to run larger deficits than plurality states. We argue that electoral institutions matter because" they restrict the type of budgetary institution at the governmental phase which a state has at its"...

This paper considers the effects of fiscal and financial policy on economic growth in open and closed economies, when human capital formation by young households is constrained by the illiquidity of human wealth. Both endogenous and exogenous growth versions of the basic OLG model are analyzed....

This empirical study finds that while debt reduction and policy reforms in debtor countries have been important determinants of renewed access to international capital markets, changes in international interest rates have been the dominant factor. We calculate the effects of changes in...

We investigate how the ability of the government to depart from budget balance and issue debt expands the set of equilibria that can be supported using lump-sum tax-transfer instruments. We show how this depends on the restrictions that exist on the capacity to tax and make transfer payments,...

This paper argues that the frequent failure of the debt swaps is not an accident. Instead, it follows from fundamental forces driven by the market's assessment of the scarcity of fiscal revenue relative to the demand for fiscal outlays. It follows from the observation that arbitrage forces...

It is now well documented that capital flight has been a dominant feature of capital movements between developing and industrial countries. Since 1988 reductions in the stock of flight capital more than account for private capital flows to emerging markets. This suggests that what appears to be...

In a competitive two-country overlapping generations model with perfect capital mobility, a plan that is individually Pareto optimal (that is Pareto optimal with respect to individual preferences) can be sustained without coordination of national fiscal policies when the fiscal arsenal is...

The motives of a small country for borrowing to purchase capital equipment on international markets are studied. The country produces tradable capital and a nontradable consumption good and borrows or lends capital to achieve higher levels of welfare. A shift in time-preference favoring future...