Suchergebnisse

This paper studies the effects of fiscal policy on GDP, prices and interest rates in 5 OECD countries, using a structural Vector Autoregression approach. Its mains results can be summarized as follows; 1) The effects of fiscal policy on GDP and its components have become substantially weaker in the last 20 years; 2) The tax multipliers tend to be negative but small; 3) Once plausible values of the price elasticity of governments spending are imposed, the negative effects of government spending on prices that have been frequently estimated become positive, although usually small and not always significant; 4) Government spending shocks have significant effects on the real short interest rate, but uncertain signs; 5) Net tax shocks have very small effects on prices; 6) The US is an outlier in many dimensions; US responses to fiscal shocks are often not representative of the average OECD country included in this sample.

This paper develops a two-country model to study two questions. How do the degrees of centralization of redistribution and of factor mobility affect the productive efficiency of the economies? What degrees of centralization of redistribution and of factor mobility are likely to be chosen by majority rule? The model shows that a system of centralized redistribution can lead to less efficient outcomes if labor or capital are not mobile; and an inefficient outcome, with incomplete or no factor mobility, receives a majority of votes in both countries, whenever the structure of labor markets is very different in the two countries. (JEL D72, E62, H50, H77)

This paper investigates the relationship between income distribution, democratic institutions, and growth. It does so by addressing three main issue. First, the properties and reliability of the income distribution data; second, the robustness of the reduced form relationships between income distribution and growth estimated so far; third, the specific channels through which income distribution affects growth.

Several countries in all parts of the world are undergoing a process of integration, several others are experiencing strong pressures towards increasing decentralization. At the same time, many of these countries are struggling to control the expansion of redistributive expenditures and their distortionary effects on the allocation of resources. Therefore, a fundamental question in all these countries is what is the allocation of tasks to different levels of governments that best controls social expenditure and minimizes distortions. Because these processes occur within or between economies with high capital mobility, a second crucial question is therefore what are the effects of capital mobility on the budget size and productivity efficiency under different fiscal policy arrangements. This paper develops a two-country model where redistribution is determined endogenously through a voting process, and argues that a decentralized regime is likely to minimize the distortionary effects of redistribution. Surprisingly, capital mobility exacerbates the inefficiency of the centralized regime. First, capital mobility increases the distortionary effects of redistribution in the economy; second, once the choice of the regime too is endogenized, it causes a majority of individuals in both countries to choose the more inefficient regime. The paper also highlights the importance of considering specific institutional aspects of redistribution, the tax system and labour markets. An important message of the model is that a process of fiscal integration may lead to "bad" outcomes when it involves countries with very different institutional characteristics.

This paper explores the effects of centralized and decentralized redistribution on the efficiency of the allocation of resources.

This paper compares the evidence concerning successful versus unsuccessful fiscal adjustments, where success is defined in terms of achieving a lasting debt reduction. The goal is to understand from successful adjustments, what policies can help the governments of countries which will soon have to implement vigorous fiscal retrenchments. We focus, in particular, on two questions: (1) is the composition of fiscal adjustments different in successful versus unsuccessful cases? That is, are successful fiscal adjustments typically achieved by means of expenditure cuts or tax increases? Which components in the expenditure and revenue sides should be adjusted? (2) What are the macroeconomic consequences of fiscal adjustments, and, are they different in successful versus unsuccessful cases?