Following the collapse of commodity prices in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) in 2014-15, many countries in the region were unable to cushion the impact of the shock in order to experience a more gradual adjustment, to a large extent because they had not built adequate fiscal buffers...

Front Cover -- Contents -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- About the Authors -- Abbreviations -- Overview -- Setting the Scene -- Fiscal Rules and Economic Size -- Small Countries: Structural Features, Business Cycles, and Recent Economic Performance -- A Snapshot of Fiscal Rules -- Fiscal Rules...

This paper aims to document a set of stylized facts characterizing business cycle dynamics in smaller economies. The paper uses a large sample of countries spanning 1960-2014 to show that country size is a significant factor affecting countries' volatility, comovement with gross domestic product...