Both conventional wisdom and leading academic research view pork barrel spending as antithetical to responsible policymaking in times of crisis. In this paper we present an alternative view. When agents are heterogeneous in their ideology and in their information about the economic situation,...

Both conventional wisdom and leading academic research view pork barrel spending as antithetical to responsible policymaking in times of crisis. In this paper we present an alternative view. When agents are heterogeneous in their ideology and in their information about the economic situation,...

We find evidence for the crisis-induces-reform hypothesis at extreme values of the inflation rate and the black market premium. Episodes of extremely high inflation or black market premiums are followed by periods of better performance than episodes of moderately high inflation or black market...

The US economy is still suffering from its most severe recession in seven decades. In the first of a series of US Election Analyses, Ethan Ilzetzki covers the key issue of taxes, spending and public debt, a major point of disagreement between the two candidates, President Obama and Governor Romney.

The latest economic growth figures confirm that the UK economy is slowly recovering from the deep recession of 2008/09. But according to researchers at the Centre for Economic Performance (CEP), the recovery will probably continue to be slow, and there is still no sign of a significant reversal...

The US economy is still suffering from its most severe recession in seven decades. In the first of a series of US Election Analyses, Ethan Ilzetzki covers the key issue of taxes, spending and public debt, a major point of disagreement between the two candidates, President Obama and Governor Romney.

A large empirical literature has found that fiscal policy in developing countries is procyclical, in contrast to high-income countries where it is countercyclical. The idea that fiscal policy in developing countries is procyclical has all but reached the status of conventional wisdom. This has...

Recent research has demonstrated that while government expenditures are countercyclical in most industrialized countries, they tend to be procyclical in developing countries. We develop a dynamic political-economy model to explain this phenomenon. Simulations of the model allow us to...

Recent research has demonstrated that while government expenditures are countercyclical in most industrialized countries, they tend to be procyclical in developing countries. We develop a dynamic political-economy model to explain this phenomenon. In the model, public expenditures provide...