The worst global downturn since the Great Depression has caused ballooning budget deficits in most nations, as tax revenues collapse and governments bail out financial institutions and attempt countercyclical fiscal policy. With notable exceptions, most economists accept the desirability of...

This paper argues that the loose monetary policy of two of the world's most important financial institutions-the US Federal Reserve Board and the European Central Bank-were ultimately responsible for the outburst of global financial crisis of 2008 - 09. Unusually low interest rates in 2001 - 05...

The empirical literature using vector autoregressive models to assess the effects of fiscal policy shocks strongly disagrees on even the qualitative response of key macroeconomic variables to government spending and tax shocks. We provide new evidence for the U.S. over the period 1955-2006. We...

We analyze data from an author-conducted survey of members of the French and German parliaments on European Monetary Union reform preferences. We consider three potential drivers of preferences: nationality, ideology, and personal characteristics. For European Monetary Union policies like...

The study analyses the dynamics and the structure of Ukraine's public finances. It assesses the medium-term impact of fiscal austerity 2014-2016, examines fiscal sustainability and estimates further fiscal adjustment efforts. It evaluates the economic and social implications of current fiscal...

The pressures on fiscal consolidation have mounted dramatically in the wake of the Greek and then the 'contagion' crisis which followed it (across the so-called 'weakest links' Portugal, Spain, Italy, Ireland). It led to the setting-up of the 750 billion euro stabilisation package widely seen as...

The supercycle of high commodity prices has had profound impacts on the Bolivian economy. We have investigated the relations of commodity prices with the main indicators of macroeconomic performance. We have found significant ties in our statistical analysis. An important question that we...

The aim of this paper is to estimate government consumption multiplier and to examine the effect of various characteristics of countries on the size of fiscal multiplier. We apply a panel VAR model following Ilzetzki et al. (2013) for a sample of 28 EU countries covering the period from 1995 to...

In this paper the authors recall the history of Jubilee debt cancellations, emphasizing what their social purpose was at that time. They note that it would not be possible to copy that procedure exactly nowadays, primarily because most debt/credit relationships are intermediated via financial...

In this paper the authors recall the history of Jubilee debt cancellations, emphasizing what their social purpose was at that time. They note that it would not be possible to copy that procedure exactly nowadays, primarily because most debt/credit relationships are intermediated via financial...