Argentina has struggled with persistently high inflation for the past two decades, surpassing 200% in 2023. While there is a broad consensus on the need for fiscal consolidation to curb inflation in the country, the path to disinflation is fraught with challenges. The objective of this paper is...

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...

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...

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...

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 provides a comparative analysis of the economic crises in Argentina and Lebanon to derive policy-relevant lessons for the design of IMF-supported adjustment programs in fragile economies. Using a structured comparative case study approach, the study examines crisis dynamics, policy...

Using cross-country data for 167 countries with broad post-World War II coverage and historical extensions to earlier periods, we quantify how deficits, taxes, and civilian spending respond to increases and decreases in military spending. On average, deficit financing dominates: a 1 percent-age...

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...

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...

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...

Several studies have investigated the fiscal sustainability of Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) countries. However, country-specific analyses fail to account for common factors and cross-dependence, while a single-panel approach is inadequate due to the region's economic diversity. Building on...

This paper analyses how fiscal consolidation shocks affect political instability in advanced economies. Using data on fiscal tightening in 17 OECD countries from 1980 to 2020, we estimate dynamic effects in a local projection framework employing a narrative-based instrumental variable approach...

Japan combines the highest public debt ratio among advanced economies with a fiscal framework that has struggled to anchor fiscal policy. As monetary policy normalises and interest rates rise, concerns about debt sustainability have intensified. We assess Japan's debt dynamics using stochastic...

This study explores the relationship between geopolitical risk and fiscal-budgetary stability of countries, focusing on how external instability impacts the dynamics of the budget deficit. Using a dynamic System GMM (Arellano-Bover/Blundell-Bond) model on a panel dataset of 25 OECD member...