How do oil price forecast errors impact inflation forecast errors? An empirical analysis from US,French and UK inflation forecasts

This paper proposes an empirical investigation of the impact of oil price forecast errors on inflation forecast errors for three different sets of recent forecast data: the median of SPF inflation forecasts for the United States and the Central Bank inflation forecasts for France and the United Kingdom. Mainly two salient points emerge from our results. First, there is a significant contribution of oil price forecast errors to the explanation of inflation forecast errors, whatever the country or the period considered. Second, the pass-through of oil price forecast errors to inflation forecast errors is typically multiplied by around 2 when the oil price volatility is large.     

Export promotion agencies: Do they work?

The number of national export promotion agencies (EPAs) has tripled over the last two decades. While more countries made them part of their export strategy, studies criticized their efficacy in developing countries. EPAs were retooled, partly in response to these critiques. This paper studies the impact of today's EPAs and their strategies, based on new survey data covering 103 developing and developed countries. Results suggest that on average they have a statistically significant effect on exports. Our identification strategies highlight the importance of EPA services for overcoming foreign trade barriers and solving asymmetric information problems associated with exports of heterogeneous goods. There are also strong diminishing returns, suggesting that as far as EPAs are concerned, small is beautiful.     

Governments’ Fiscal Squeeze and Firms’ Pollution Emissions: Evidence from a Natural Experiment in China

Environmental and Resource Economics - We investigate whether and how government fiscal squeeze affects local firms’ pollution emissions. To establish causality, we introduce a policy shock...     

Does Urbanization Mean Bigger Governments?

In this paper, we introduce urbanization as an important driver of government size. Using panel data for 175 countries from 1960 to 2010, we find that there is a close link between urbanization and the size of the public sector, especially when looking at education, health care, and social issues. Various robustness checks confirm this finding. An analysis of state‐level public spending in Colombia and Germany confirms our hypothesis on the subnational level. On the microeconomic level, people in urban areas acknowledge that governments should take more responsibility, and they are more in favor of redistribution. This finding can help to explain the evolution of government size, and it can also predict the present and future needs of urbanizing areas.     

Fiscal consolidation in Europe: has it worked?

The aim of this article is to shed some light on the issue of fiscal austerity within Europe. We focus specifically on the 2008Q1–2014Q4 period, and on the effect of shocks to government expenditure and taxes on unemployment, controlling for other macro factors. We find that expenditure contractions may be detrimental for employment.     

Fiscal discipline and exchange rates: Does politics matter?

We look at the effect of exchange rate regimes on fiscal discipline, taking into account the effect of underlying political conditions. We present a model where strong politics (defined as policymakers facing longer political horizon and higher cohesion) are associated with better fiscal performance, but fixed exchange rates may revert this result and lead to less fiscal discipline. We confirm these hypotheses through regression analysis performed on a panel sample covering 79 countries from 1975 to 2012. Our empirical results also show that the positive effect of strong politics on fiscal discipline is not enough to counter the negative impact of being at/moving to fixed exchange rates. Our results are robust to a number of sensitivity checks, including the use of different estimators, alternative proxies for fiscal discipline and sub-sample analysis.     

Fiscal policy in the US: Sustainable after all?

The sustainability of US public debt has been widely discussed since the Great Recession. Using annual data since 1940, we estimate and compare different specifications of fiscal rules. Estimates of constant-parameter fiscal rules show no evidence of sustainability. This may be due to the instability of government's behaviour over time. Thus, we estimate a Markov-switching fiscal rule in order to identify periods of unsustainable and sustainable fiscal policies. First, we show that the government stabilizes public debt only periodically. Second, during these periods, the government's reaction is sufficiently tight to stabilize public debt over the entire horizon. We conclude that a relatively short-lived but tight fiscal contraction can be sufficient to ensure long-run US debt sustainability.     

Fiscal policy and the current account: are microstates different?

This article examines the empirical link between fiscal policy and the current account focusing on microstates defined as countries with a population of less than 2 million between 1970 and 2009. This article employs panel regression and Panel Vector Autoregression (PVAR) on 155 countries of which 42 are microstates. Panel regression results show that a percentage point improvement in the fiscal balance improves the current account balance by 0.4 percentage points of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The real effective exchange rate has no significant impact on the current account in microstates but the coefficient is significant in the global sample. PVAR results show that an increase in government consumption results in real exchange appreciation, but the effect on the current account after an initial deterioration dies out quicker in microstates than in the global sample. The result implies that fiscal policy has little effect on the current account in microstates beyond its direct impact on imports. Overall, the results suggest that the weak relative price effects make the effect of fiscal adjustment on the current account much more difficult in microstates.     

Analyzing the Interaction of Monetary and Fiscal Policy: Does Fiscal Policy Play a Valuable Role in Stabilisation?

This paper provides an overview of recent papers which use estimatedNew Keynesian models to study the extent to which fiscal policycan be used to stabilize the economy. We use a variety of differentNew Keynesian models, estimated on data for both the US andfor the Euro area, and highlight the diverse transmission channelsthrough which fiscal policy acts in these models. Although wefind that fiscal policy can provide a useful complement to monetarypolicy, especially in models where consumers have finite horizons,there are important limitations to the value added of fiscalpolicy. (JEL E58, E62, E63)     

Can rational stubbornness explain forecast biases?

This paper examines whether the rational jumpiness/stubbornness hypothesis can explain forecast biases. Using a dataset of professional GDP forecasts for the G7 countries over the period 1989–2010, we find evidence supporting the rational stubbornness hypothesis. Specifically, forecasters underreact more when large forecast revisions are highly indicative of low forecast ability. Underreaction is less likely when the size of forecast revisions is unrelated to ability. These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that forecasters choose to smooth GDP forecasts to maximize their perceived ability.     

Is Abe's Fiscal Policy Ricardian? What Does the Fiscal Theory of Prices Mean for Japan?

The second arrow of Abenomics is flexible fiscal policy. However, it does not mean just fiscal stimulus as the Abe administration decided on the fiscal consolidation target of achieving a primary surplus by fiscal year 2020. Improving the primary balance implies making government debt more sustainable. Although the consumption tax rate was raised from 5% to 8% in April 2014, the Abe administration has decided twice to postpone increasing the consumption tax from 8% to 10%. In addition, a fiscal stimulus package was implemented. We use a Fiscal Stance Index to examine fiscal policy from the viewpoint of fiscal sustainability and a Markov switching model to examine fiscal policy from the viewpoint of the fiscal theory of the price level, and find that the Abe's fiscal stance is not Ricardian.     

How do experts forecast sovereign spreads?

This paper assesses how forecasting experts form their expectations about future government bond spreads. Using monthly survey forecasts for France, Italy and the United Kingdom between January 1993 and October 2014, we test whether respondents consider the expected evolution of the fiscal balance—and other economic fundamentals—to be significant drivers of the expected bond yield differential over a benchmark German 10-year bond. Our main result is that a projected improvement of the fiscal outlook significantly reduces expected sovereign spreads. This suggests that credible fiscal plans affect market experts’ expectations and reduce the pressure on sovereign bond markets. In addition, we show that expected fundamentals generally play a more important role in explaining forecasted spreads compared to realized spreads.     

Expansionary Contractions and Fiscal Free Lunches: Too Good To Be True?

This paper builds a framework to jointly examine the possibilities of both expansionary fiscal contractions (austerity increasing output) and fiscal free lunches (expansions reducing government debt), arguments which in recent debates have been supported by the austerity and stimulus camps, respectively. We propose a new metric quantifying the budgetary implications of fiscal action, a key aspect of fiscal policy particularly at the monetary zero lower bound. We find that austerity needs to be highly persistent and credible in order to be expansionary, and stimulus needs to be temporary, responsive, and well‐targeted in order to lower debt. We conclude that neither is likely, especially during periods of economic distress.     

Anti‐corruption agencies: Rhetoric Versus reality

The anti‐corruption successes of Singapore and Hong Kong have encouraged the establishment of strong, centralized anti‐corruption agencies across the globe. This study charts the emergence of anti‐corruption agencies (ACAs), and then examines recent experiences with these bodies in developing countries. We propose a set of criteria for assessing and explaining their performance. The analysis applies within strict limits to those countries that have established the minimum political, legal, and socio‐economic conditions for effective governance. Where these conditions are in place, success is possible. However, ACAs in poor and badly governed states are generally ineffective, if not actively harmful.     

Is Fiscal Policy Procyclical in the Euro Area?

We test the relationship between the cyclically adjusted primary balance and alternative indicators of cyclical conditions for the euro area and 18 OECD countries over the period 1970–2009. A countercyclical stance of discretionary fiscal policy is found during bad times after 1999 in the euro area as a whole and in a few member countries only (France, Ireland and The Netherlands). It is also associated with high public deficits or low public debts. There is no significant case of procyclical fiscal policy after 1999, neither in good times nor in bad times.     

Fiscal Reliance on Tariff Revenues: In Search of a Political Economy Explanation?

One "stylized fact" about trade policy is that trade taxes as a proportion of total tax revenue are inversely related to a country's economic development, as in countries with poor administrative capabilities trade taxes represent the easiest way for governments to raise revenue (Administrative Capabilities Hypothesis). In this paper we develop an alternative explanation based on political economy considerations: using data from 64 developing countries from 1982 until 1997 we find that the Administrative Capabilities Hypothesis must be complemented with a political economy explanation in order to be able to provide a better account of the relevant empirical evidence.     

How Does Fiscal Consolidation Impact on Income Inequality?

In this paper, we assess the impact of fiscal consolidation on income inequality. Using a panel of 18 industrialized countries from 1978 to 2009, we find that income inequality significantly rises during periods of fiscal consolidation. In addition, while fiscal policy that is driven by spending cuts seems to be detrimental for income distribution, tax hikes seem to have an equalizing effect. We also show that the size of the fiscal consolidation program (in percentage of GDP) has an impact on income inequality. In particular, when consolidation plans represent a small share of GDP, the income gap widens, suggesting that the burden associated with the effort affects disproportionately households at the bottom of the income distribution. Considering the linkages between banking crises and fiscal consolidation, we find that the effect on the income gap is amplified when fiscal adjustments take place after the resolution of such financial turmoil. Similarly, fiscal consolidation programs combined with inflation are likely to increase inequality and the effects of fiscal adjustments on inequality are amplified during periods of relatively low growth. Our results also provide support for a non‐linear relationship between inequality and income and corroborate the idea that trade can promote a more equal distribution of income.