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In a global economy beset by concerns over a growth recession, financial volatility, and rising inflation, countries in the Western Hemisphere have been among the few bright spots in recent years. This has not come as a surprise to those following the significant progress achieved by many countries in recent years, both in macroeconomic management and on the structural and institutional front. Hence, there can be little doubt, as this book argues, that economic and financial linkages between Latin America, the United States, and other important regions of the world economy have undergone profound change.
The authors examine the numerous structural and policy changes Indian authorities have adopted since the 1991 balance of payments crisis; how these changes helped India weather the Asian financial crisis of 1997-98; the risks to fiscal sustainability and their implications for growth; the challenges facing monetary policy in the face of financial market liberalization; and the benefits of structural reform and fiscal policy for growth, poverty, and the reduction of regional disparities.
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India has a long history of running fiscal deficits. Two broad considerations motivate a government to run a deficit: tax smoothing and tax tilting. This paper tests a version of Barro’s tax-smoothing model, using Indian data for the period 1951-52 to 1996-97. The empirical results indicate that the central government of India has tax-smoothed, while the regional governments of India have not. The paper also finds evidence of tax tilting, reflected in financial repression, which has led to the accumulation of excessive public liabilities.
This paper provides a comprehensive survey of pertinent issues on sovereign debt restructurings, based on a newly constructed database. This is the first complete dataset of sovereign restructuring cases, covering the six decades from 1950–2010; it includes 186 debt exchanges with foreign banks and bondholders, and 447 bilateral debt agreements with the Paris Club. We present new stylized facts on the outcome and process of debt restructurings, including on the size of haircuts, creditor participation, and legal aspects. In addition, the paper summarizes the relevant empirical literature, analyzes recent restructuring episodes, and discusses ongoing debates on crisis resolution mechanisms, credit default swaps, and the role of collective action clauses.
A recovery is underway, but the economic fallout from the global pandemic could be with us for years to come. With the crisis exacerbating prepandemic vulnerabilities, country prospects are diverging. Nearly half of emerging market and developing economies and some middle-income countries are now at risk of falling further behind, undoing much of the progress made toward achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
This report reviews recent US fiscal developments and discusses key policy challenges that will need to be addressed in order to tackle the growing pressures on public retirement and health care systems during the next decade. Chapters discuss: the fiscal deficit and the need for fiscal reform; the economic impact of budget policies; fiscal consequences of social security and medicare; an intergenerational analysis of fiscal imbalances, debt dynamics and fiscal sustainability; energy policy and the role of taxation to reduce consumption.
Transparency in government operations is widely regarded as an important precondition for macroeconomic fiscal sustainability, good governance, and overall fiscal rectitude. Notably, the Interim Committee, at its April and September 1996 meetings, stressed the need for greater fiscal transparency. Prompted by these concerns, this paper represents a first attempt to address many of the aspects of transparency in government operations. It provides an overview of major issues in fiscal transparency and examines the IMF's role in promoting transparency in government operations.
Governments issue debt for good and bad reasons. While the good reasons—intertemporal tax-smoothing, fiscal stimulus, and asset management—can explain some of the increases in public debt in recent years, they cannot account for all of the observed changes. Bad reasons for borrowing are driven by political failures associated with intergenerational transfers, strategic manipulation, and common pool problems. These political failures are a major cause of overborrowing though budgetary institutions and fiscal rules can play a role in mitigating governments’ tendencies to overborrow. While it is difficult to establish a clear causal link from high public debt to low output growth, it is likely that some countries pay a price—in terms of lower growth and greater output volatility—for excessive debt accumulation.
This paper questions the view that leverage should have forewarned us of the global financial crisis of 2007-09, pointing to several gearing indicators that were neither useful portents of the onset of the crisis nor of its ferocity. Instead it shows, first, that the use of ill-suited collateral in the secured funding operations of U.S.-based investment banks was the fatal link between the collapse of structured finance and the global malfunction of funding markets that turbocharged the downdraft; and, second, that this insight (and others) can be decrypted from the Flow of Funds Accounts of the United States.