General government fiscal balance

1 Fiscal Flows , Fiscal Balance , and Fiscal Sustainability Richard

The search for “fiscal indicators” to provide a short-hand (and preferably quantitative) picture of the size, direction, and nature of intergovernmental finance – and, ideally, some guidance for policy designed to improve outcomes – appears to be neverending. “Fiscal balance” and “fiscal sustainability” are, for example, terms commonly heard in discussions of intergovernmental fiscal relations....

Fiscal Decentralization and Government Size

This paper explores the link between fiscal decentralization and government size in Latin America. While most related work attempts to test Brennan and Buchannan's "Liviathan" hypothesis, here the emphasis is placed on a different channel: the potential for decentralization to aggravate the common pool problem. In addition to the degree of expenditure decentralization, we consider the importanc...

Fiscal Decentralization and Government in Latin America.PDF

The views and interpretations in this document are those of the authors and should not be attributed to the Inter-American Development Bank, or to any individual acting on its behalf. The Office of the Chief Economist (OCE) publishes working paper series and books on diverse economic issues. To obtain a complete list of OCE publications, please visit our Web Site at: am grateful for their input...

Fiscal Decentralization and Government Size in Latin

Optimal Fiscal Stabilisation through Government Spending

This paper examines under what conditions fiscal policy in the form of government spending should contribute to macroeconomic stabilisation. To this end optimal fiscal targeting rules minimising the microfounded social loss are examined in the following settings. Firstly, for the benchmark New Keynesian model, where monetary policy is unconstrained, a neutrality result for fiscal obtains: fisca...