Publication: Challenges of Fiscal Policy in Emerging and Developing Economies
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Published
2018
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1540-496X
Date
2018-08-06
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This article presents a systematic analysis of the availability and use of fiscal space in emerging and developing economies. We report two major results. First, emerging and developing economies built fiscal space in the run-up to the Great Recession of 2008–2009, which was then used for stimulus. Since then, fiscal space has shrunk and remains narrow as these economies have taken advantage of historically low interest rates. Second, fiscal policy in emerging and developing economies has become countercyclical (or less procyclical), i.e., “graduated,” since the 1980s, as most clearly demonstrated during the Great Recession. The move towards graduation is most pronounced for those economies with greater fiscal space, which suggests that fiscal space matters for a government’s ability to implement countercyclical fiscal policy.
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An important prerequisite for fiscal policy to be effective is that these economies have the necessary fiscal space to employ countercyclical policies. Over the medium-term, credible and well-designed institutional arrangements, such as fiscal rules, stabilization funds, and medium-term expenditure frameworks, can help build fiscal space and strengthen policy outcomes.Publication Do Fiscal Multipliers Depend on Fiscal Positions?(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2016-06)This paper analyzes the relationship between fiscal multipliers and fiscal positions of governments using an Interactive Panel Vector Auto Regression model and a large data-set of advanced and developing economies. The methodology permits tracing the endogenous relationship between fiscal multipliers and fiscal positions while maintaining enough degrees of freedom to draw sharp inferences. The paper reports three major results. 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