The end of the great moderation has profound implications on the assessment of fiscalsustainability. The pertinent issue goes beyond the increase in stock of public debt/GDP inducedby the global recession, to include the perspective that the sustainability of a given publicdebt/GDP depends on...

We examine the open macroeconomic policy choices of developing economies from the perspectiveof the economic “trilemma†hypothesis. We construct an index of divergence of the threetrilemma policy choices, and evaluate its patterns in recent decades. We find that the threedimensions of...

This paper analyzes reforms and adjustments in the context of the Euro and the global financialcrises. Taking the perspective of the evolutionary approach to institutions, the formation of a newcurrency area is not unidirectional. The process leading to the euro is an example of a commonupbeat...

The accumulated experience of emerging markets over the last two decades has laid bare thetenuous links between external financial integration and faster growth on the one hand and theproclivity of such integration to fuel costly crises on the other. These crises have not gonewithout learning....

In this paper, we explore the link between stress in the domestic financial sector and the capital flightfaced by countries in the 2008-9 global crisis. Both the timing of emergence of internal financial stress indeveloping economies, and the size of the peak-trough declines in the stock price...

This paper evaluates how the global financial crisis emanating from theU.S. was transmitted to emerging markets. Our focus is on the extent thatthe crisis caused external market pressures (EMP), and whether theabsorption of the shock was mainly through exchange rate depreciation orthe loss of...

This paper studies the patterns of fiscal stimuli in the OECD countries propagated by the global crisis.Overall, we find that the USA net fiscal stimulus was modest relative to peers, despite it being theepicenter of the crisis, and having access to relatively cheap funding of its twin deficits....

This paper investigates the association between greater income inequality, de-facto fiscalspace, and sovereign spreads. Using data from 50 countries in 2007, in 2009 and in 2011, wefind that higher income inequality is associated with a lower tax base, lower de-facto fiscalspace, and higher...

This note shows that the aggregate fiscal expenditure stimulus in the United States, properly adjusted for the declining fiscal expenditure of the fifty states, was close to zero in 2009. While the Federal government stimulus prevented a net decline in aggregate fiscal expenditure, it did not...