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Second-Generation Fiscal Rules
Fiscal rule frameworks have evolved significantly in response to the global financial crisis. Many countries have reformed their fiscal rules or introduced new ones with a view to enhancing the credibility of fiscal policy and providing a medium-term anchor. Enforcement and monitoring mechanisms have also been upgraded. However, these innovations have made the systems of rules more complicated to operate, while compliance has not improved. The SDN takes stock of past experiences, reviews recent reforms, and presents new research on the effectiveness of rules. It also proposes guiding principles for future reforms to strike a better balance between simplicity, flexibility, and enforceability. Read the blog
That Squeezing Feeling
The paper explores the extent to which the pressure of debt service on other spending items may push governments to embark on fiscal consolidation beyond what is strictly necessary to secure solvency. The empirical analysis identifies thresholds of interest bill indicators beyond which governments appear to shift to policies aimed at durably curbing the debt trajectory. Hence, in the current context of high inherited public debts, countries experiencing rising borrowing costs and interest payments would be more likely to enact more aggressive fiscal consolidations than warranted by strict solvency concerns. Conversely, those benefiting from persistently low interest rates despite rising debt stocks would likely opt for a more gradual fiscal consolidation path than what solvency considerations would normally dictate.
Turkey at the Crossroads
The key policy challenge for Turkey in the years ahead will be to enhance and consolidate the advances made since the nation’s 2000-01 economic crisis. Higher growth could reduce unemployment and raise living standards toward European Union levels. This paper reviews Turkey’s policy performance in terms of growth, inflation, debt, fiscal and financial sector reform, and labor markets. The analysis assesses the effectiveness of macroeconomic stabilization and structural reforms since the crisis and provides guideposts for future policy.
Welfare Effects of Monetary Integration
This paper proposes a quantitative assessment of the welfare effects arising from the Common Monetary Area (CMA) and an array of broader grouping among Southern African Development Community (SADC) countries. Model simulations suggest that (i) participating in the CMA benefits all members; (ii) joining the CMA individually is beneficial for all SADC members except Angola, Mauritius and Tanzania; (iii) creating a symmetric CMA-wide monetary union with a regional central bank carries some costs in terms of foregone anti-inflationary credibility; and (iv) SADC-wide symmetric monetary union continues to be beneficial for all except Mauritius, although the gains for existing CMA members are likely to be limited.
Should African Monetary Unions Be Expanded? An Empirical Investigation of the Scope for Monetary Integration in Sub-Saharan Africa
This paper develops a full-fledged cost-benefit analysis of monetary integration, and applies it to the currency unions actively pursued in Africa. The benefits of monetary union come from a more credible monetary policy, while the costs derive from real shock asymmetries and fiscal disparities. The model is calibrated using African data. Simulations indicate that the proposed EAC, ECOWAS, and SADC monetary unions bring about net benefits to some potential members, but modest net gains and sometimes net losses for others. Strengthening domestic macroeconomic frameworks is shown to provide some of the same improvements as monetary integration, reducing the latter’s relative attractiveness.
Fiscal Policy and Macroeconomic Stability
The paper revisits the link between fiscal policy and macroeconomic stability. Two salient features of our analysis are (1) a systematic test for the government’s ambivalent role as a shock absorber and a shock inducer—removing a downward bias present in existing estimates of the impact of automatic stabilizers—and (2) a broad sample of advanced and emerging market economies. Results provide strong support for the view that fiscal stabilization operates mainly through automatic stabilizers. Also, the destabilizing impact of policy changes not systematically related to the business cycle may not be as robust as suggested in the literature.
Reconciling Stability and Growth
This paper analyzes the decision of a government facing electoral uncertainty to implement structural reforms in the presence of fiscal restraints similar to the Stability and Growth Pact. The model shows that a pact may harm structural reforms, sacrificing future growth for present stability. The welfare gains brought about by a pact depend on a trade-off between the reduction in the deficit bias and the induced reduction in the amount of structural reform. A pact becomes more attractive (“smarter”) if it takes into account the fiscal impact of structural reforms, in line with a recent proposal by the European Commission.
Independent Fiscal Councils: Recent Trends and Performance
Countries increasingly rely on independent fiscal councils to constrain policymakers’ discretion and curb the bias towards excessive deficits and pro-cyclical policies. Since fiscal councils are often recent and heterogeneous across countries, assessing their impact is challenging. Using the latest (2016) vintage of the IMF Fiscal Council Dataset, we focus on two tasks expected to strengthen fiscal performance: the preparation or assessment of forecasts, and the monitoring of compliance with fiscal rules. Tentative econometric evidence suggests that the presence of a fiscal council is associated with more accurate and less optimistic fiscal forecasts, as well as greater compliance with fiscal rules.
Fiscal Councils
The paper discusses the effectiveness of independent fiscal institutions—or fiscal councils—in taming the deficit bias that emerged in the 1970s. After a review of the main theoretical arguments and recent trends about fiscal councils, we develop a stylized model showing how a fiscal council can effectively mitigate the deficit bias even though it has no direct lever on the conduct of fiscal policy. We show that the capacity of the fiscal council to improve the public’s understanding of the quality of fiscal policy contributes to better align voters and policymakers’ incentives and to tame the deficit bias affecting well-intended governments. After mapping the model’s key features into a broad set of criteria likely to contribute to the effectiveness of a fiscal council, we use the 2014 vintage of the IMF dataset on independent fiscal institutions to assess whether existing institutions have been built to work.
The Political Economy of Fiscal Transparency and Independent Fiscal Councils
The global surge in independent fiscal councils (IFCs) raises three related questions: How can IFCs improve the conduct of fiscal policy? Are they simultaneously desirable for voters and elected policymakers? And are they resilient to changes in political conditions? We build a model in which voters cannot observe the true competence of elected policymakers. IFCs’ role is to mitigate this imperfection. Equilibrium public debt is excessive because policymakers are “partisan” and “opportunistic.” If voters only care about policymakers’ competence, both the incumbent and the voters would be better off with an IFC as the debt bias would shrink. However, when other considerations ecli...
