Welfare benefit sanctions are a common tool in many social insurance systems. Using a regression discontinuity design based on close elections, we investigate how representatives’ political alignment influences the implementation of a new sanction regime in the UK. Our results show that...

This study examines the impact of public debt on economic growth and the effects of fiscal consolidation efforts in the Western Balkan countries (WB6)-Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and Serbia. Utilizing a dual methodology of descriptive and panel data...

This paper is about fiscal consolidation measures (i.e. tax hikes and government spending cuts motivated by a desire to reduce the fiscal deficit and public debt) in euro area (EA) countries. The focus is on analysing the growth effects of fiscal adjustments as well as their implications for...

This paper is about fiscal consolidation measures (i.e. tax hikes and government spending cuts motivated by a desire to reduce the fiscal deficit and public debt) in euro area (EA) countries. The focus is on analysing the growth effects of fiscal adjustments as well as their implications for...

Given the rise in the government debt level in recent times, this paper aims to examine the effect of an increase in government size on risk premium and its transmission in the economy. We jointly identify the term spread shock (originating at the short end and the long end) and the government...

This paper estimates the effects of past fiscal consolidations in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) on income inequality. For the 13 LAC countries with fiscal consolidation episodes identified by the narrative approach, one percent of GDP fiscal consolidation increases the disposable Gini...

We provide new evidence on the effects of fiscal consolidation measures on output, unemployment, income inequality and consumer price inflation. To identify causal impacts, we use a narrative-based instrumental variable strategy drawing on historical records of exogenous fiscal changes motivated...

A reform in the German state of Hesse selectively shifted the responsibility for overseeing and enforcing a balanced budget rule at the municipal level. Oversight was transferred from politically affiliated county administrators to non-political and potentially more impartial fiscal supervisors...

This paper introduces the first narrative-based dataset on fiscal consolidations for sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Drawing on staff reports from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) during the period 1990-2024 and using an approach assisted by artificial intelligence (AI), the dataset...

The central contention of this report is that the UK fiscal framework has some desirable features but is not delivering good outcomes. We are in a bad equilibrium. The UK's fiscal framework is based around a set of pass-fail, numerical fiscal rules. The fiscal debate is overly fixated on the...

Fiscal sustainability refers to a government's capacity to generate sufficient revenue to cover its expenses and repay its debts without accumulating excessive liabilities or creating new money. Recent observations indicate that Kenya's economic growth has slowed, prompting concerns about its...

This study examines public debt sustainability in the Eurozone by estimating fiscal reaction functions that assess how fiscal balances respond to rising public debt under heterogeneous macroeconomic conditions. Using annual panel data for 20 EU countries from 2000 to 2024, we employ fixed...

This study examines the impact of key governance dimensions on public budget rationalization in Palestine from 2002 to 2023. Utilizing Legitimacy Theory, the research assesses how institutional quality affects fiscal outcomes, including revenues, expenditures, net lending, and budget balance....

This paper investigates the impact of fiscal consolidation in different states on domestic government debt in South Africa. The government budget constraint theoretical framework and Markov-switching dynamic regression (MSDR) from 1979 to 2022. The contribution of this paper is to examine fiscal...

This paper investigates the threshold impact of government debt on economic growth in the presence of fiscal consolidation in South Africa from 1979 to 2022. The autoregressive threshold regime (TAR) model and two-stage least squares (2SLS) are used. The contribution of the paper is on the...

This paper investigates the effects of macroeconomic uncertainty on economic growth in the presence of fiscal consolidation in South Africa. Markov-switching dynamic regression (MSDR) and time-varying parameter vector autoregression (TVP-VAR) were performed using time series data from 1994 to...

This paper investigates the impact of the time-varying elasticity of the cyclically adjusted primary balance (CAPB) and fiscal consolidation on government debt. The time-varying parameter structural vector autoregression (TVP-VAR) model is used on a time series of data from 1979 to 2022. The...

Sri Lanka's fiscal adjustment - nearly 8 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) since 2021 - has been exceptionally large by both historical and international standards. It has been critical in stabilizing the economy, reducing fiscal imbalances, and restoring macroeconomic stability. With...

The article reviews the latest version of the proposal for a new Stability and Growth Pact of the European Union, as accepted by the European Parliament in April 2024. After summarising the main changes, the macroeconomic evaluation attempts to gauge whether the main goal of the Pact –...

The Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF), which was adopted to support economic recovery from the COVID-19 crisis, represents the first large-scale EU-wide investment initiative, including decarbonisation goals. Yet temporary RRF spending will not be sufficient to meet the climate targets in...

The reform of the European fiscal rules came into force on 30 April 2024. The new rules, like the former ones, impose a depressive bias on domestic fiscal policies, leaving Member States' no fiscal room for manoeuvre. At the same time, the European Pillar of Social Rights sets ambitious targets...