The paper compares fiscal cyclicality across regions and countries from 1960 to 2016. It finds that more than half of 170 countries analyzed in seven regions had, in more recent years, limited fiscal space, and that their fiscal policy was either cyclical or procyclical. This was particularly...

The pronounced and persistent impact of the global financial crisis of 2008 motivates our empirical analysis of the role of institutions and macroeconomic fundamentals on countries' adjustment to shocks. Our empirical analysis shows that the associations of growth level, growth volatility,...

This paper evaluates the degree to which current account patterns are explained by the variables suggested by the literature, and reflects on possible future patterns. We start with panel regressions explaining the current account of 69 countries during 1981-2006. We identify an asymmetric...

We define the notion of 'de facto fiscal space' of a country as the outstanding public debt relative to the de facto tax base, where the latter measures the realized tax collection, averaged across several years to smooth for business cycle fluctuations. We apply this concept to account for the...