It is well-known by now that government spending has typically been countercyclical in industrial countries and procyclical in developing economies. Most of this literature has focused on analyzing aggregate government spending or discretionary spending categories such as government consumption...

We develop a framework to study the effects of policies of uncertain duration on consumption dynamics under both complete and incomplete markets. We focus on the dynamic implications of market incompleteness, specifically on the lack of state-contingent bonds. Two policies are considered: pure...

This paper examines trade reforms of uncertain duration undertaken in economies subject to real foreign and domestic shocks. These reforms induce consumption and import booms regardless of whether they succeed or fail and of the degree of intertemporal elasticity of substitution. If tariff...

This paper studies whether changes in the composition of public spending affect the macroeconomic consequences of fiscal consolidations. Results based on a sample of advanced and developing countries show that while fiscal consolidations tend to be contractionary on average, the size of the...

This paper explores the impact of international financial integration on credit markets in Latin America, using a cross-country dataset covering 17 countries between 1996 and 2008. It is found that financial integration amplifies the impact of international financial shocks on aggregate credit...

This paper explores the impact of international financial integration on credit markets in Latin America, using a cross-country dataset covering 17 countries between 1996 and 2008. It is found that financial integration amplifies the impact of international financial shocks on aggregate credit...

This paper explores the impact of international financial integration on credit markets in Latin America, using a cross-country dataset covering 17 countries between 1996 and 2008. It is found that financial integration amplifies the impact of international financial shocks on aggregate credit...

We show that some types of fiscal rules can mitigate the well-known procyclical bias in public capital expenditures. Past research has found that fiscal adjustment episodes coincide with large public investment cuts, a pattern we also document in a sample of 75 advanced and emerging economies...