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Conventional wisdom holds that voters punish governments that implement fiscal austerity. Yet, most empirical studies, which rely on ex-post yearly austerity measures, do not find supportive evidence. This paper revisits the issue using action-based, real-time, ex-ante measures of fiscal austerity as well as a new database of changes in vote shares of incumbent parties. The analysis emphasizes the importance of the ‘how’—whether austerity is done via tax hikes or expenditure cuts—and the ‘who’—whether it is carried out by left- vs. right-leaning governments. Our main finding is that tax-based austerity carries large electoral costs, while the effect of expenditure-based consolidations depends on the political-leaning of the government. An austerity package worth 1% of GDP, carried out mostly through tax hikes, reduces the vote share of the leader’s party by about 7%. In contrast, expenditure-based austerity is detrimental for left- but beneficial for right-leaning governments. We also find that the electoral cost of austerity—especially tax hikes—can be contained if it is implemented during good economic times.
Many countries are experiencing persistent, weak medium-term growth and limited fiscal space. Against this background, economic policy agendas—in both advanced and developing economies—are focusing increasingly on structural reforms. While there is broad agreement on the economic benefits of structural reforms, the political-economy of reform is less settled. This is because reforms may generate gains only in the longer term while distributional effects may be sizable in the short run, and because governments may lack political capital to confront vocal interest groups. In these circumstances, politicians may hold back on reforms, fearing they will be penalized at the ballot box. The aim of this Staff Discussion Note is to examine whether the fear of a political cost associated with structural reforms is justified by the available evidence, and whether there are lessons from the data about how reform strategies might be designed to mitigate potential political costs. It provides a major addition to recent IMF analysis examining the output and employment effect of reforms
Economic development and growth depend on a country’s young people. With most of their working life ahead of them they make up about a third of the working-age population in the typical emerging market and developing economy. But the youth in these economies face a daunting labor market—about 20 percent of them are neither employed, in school, nor in training (the youth inactivity rate). This is double the share in the average advanced economy. Were nothing else to change, bringing youth inactivity in these economies down to what it is in advanced economies and getting those inactive young people into new jobs would have a striking effect. The working-age employment rate in the average emerging market and developing economy would rise more than 3 percentage points, and real output would get a 5 percent boost.
Nothing Changes the World – Excerpts and Insights on the Art of Nothing What is the “art of nothing”? How do we approach this question, not with the determination of obtaining an answer but starting with the fact that we don’t know what it is, and perhaps through a journey within oneself, one can discover what is the essence of this art of nothing. To discover this, one must really ask the question of what is life - not someone else’s life, but your life. Can we investigate in such a way as to discover if the art of nothing is indeed the art that transforms your entire consciousness to be free of suffering, or does it introduce another idealistic theory for which we will stay trapp...
The negative and stable relationship between an economy’s aggregate demand conditions and overall unemployment is well-documented. We show that there is a large degree of heterogeneity in the cyclical sensitivities of unemployment across worker and economy groups. First, unemployment is more than twice as sensitive to aggregate demand in advanced as in emerging market and developing economies. Second, youth’s unemployment is twice as sensitive as that of adults’. Third, women’s unemployment is significantly less sensitive to demand than men’s in advanced economies. These findings point to the highly unequal impacts of the business cycle across worker and economy groups.
Labor market deregulation, intended to boost productivity and employment, is one plausible, yet little studied, driver of the decline in labor shares that took place across most advanced economies since the early 1990s. This paper assesses the impact of job protection deregulation in a sample of 26 advanced economies over the period 1970-2015, using a newly constructed dataset of major reforms to employment protection legislation for regular contracts. We apply the local projection method to estimate the dynamic response of the labor share to our reform events at both the country and the country-industry levels. For the latter, we employ a differences-in-differences identification strategy u...
The aim of this SDN is to examine whether fear of a political cost associated with economic reforms is justified by the available evidence, and whether there are lessons from how economic policies might be adjusted to mitigate any political cost. The paper will be based on a new comprehensive database on structural reforms developed by RES, which covers a broad sample of advanced and developing economies over four decades, and incorporates regulations related to the real sector (labor, product markets, trade and the current account), and the financial sector (banking, securities markets and the capital account). The paper will address three questions. First, do reforms reduce the probability of a government getting reelected? Second, for which reforms are political costs particularly high? And third, can fiscal stimulus or other policies “sweeten the pill,” and would favorable economic conditions or greater reform ownership raise the odds for reelection?
The 2019 AIDAA Congress is the biennial Congress of the Italian Association of Aeronautics and Astronautics, the Italian no-profit cultural association dedicated to the aerospace community. AIDAA was formed in 1969 through a merging of the former Societies AIDA (Associazione Italiana di Aerotecnica formed in 1920) and AIR (Associazione Italiana Razzi).In 1951, AIDA was among the founders of the International Astronautical Federation (IAF) and in 1957 of the International Council of Aeronautical Sciences (ICAS). In 1992 AIDAA joined the Confederation of European Aerospace Societies (CEAS).The Congress is jointly hosted by AIDAA Rome Section, the Departments of Astronautic, Electric and Energetic Engineering (DIAEE) and of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering (DIMA) of Civil and Industrial Engineering Faculty and the School of Aerospace Engineering (SIA) of Sapienza University of Rome. The degree courses in Aerospace Engineering are attended by almost 1500 students.
Global economic developments have begun to improve, helped by lower energy prices, improving business and consumer sentiment, and the reopening of China. However, the OECD Economic Outlook highlights that the upturn is fragile and the recovery is set to remain weak by past standards, with the effects of tighter monetary policy increasingly being felt.
The Outlook underlines a range of risks, including the potential for disruptions to commodity markets and trade from heightened geopolitical tensions, uncertainty about the persistence of inflation, and the extent to which excess household savings will be run down.