Fiscal adjustment becomes like walking up the down escalator when growth-promoting spending is cut so much as to lower growth and thus the present value of future tax revenues to a degree that more than offsets the improvement in the cash deficit. Although short-term cash flows matter, a...

When growth-promoting spending is cut so much that the present value of future government revenues falls by more than the immediate improvement in the cash deficit, fiscal adjustment becomes like walking up the down escalator. Although short-term cash flows matter, too tight a focus on them...

Customers in the US and Canada please order from Stanford University Press at (800) 621-2736 or visit their website at www.sup.org. Over the 1980s and 1990s, most Latin American countries witnessed a retrenchment of the public sector from infrastructure provision and an opening up of...