This paper reconsiders the role of separation principles between monetary and fiscal policies which in ‘normal’ times are seen as being conducive to stable outcomes of policymaking. Such principles are discussed for both ordinary nation states (i.e. ‘single economies’, characterized by one monetary and one fiscal policy) and ‘monetary unions’ (characterized by one monetary and many fiscal polic...

This project examines fiscal reforms in Brazil since the 1990s, particularly in taxation, budgeting, and fiscal federalism. While recentralizing fiscal authority and massively expanding the extractive capacity of the state, policymakers chose not to revamp an inefficient tax system that has nonetheless proven capable of generating high levels of revenue. In budgeting, the economic crises of the...

This paper studies the effects of monetary policy rules in a fiscal federation, such as the European Union. The focus of the analysis is the interaction between the fiscal policy of member countries (regions) and the monetary authority. Each of the countries structures its fiscal policy (spending and taxes) with the interests of its citizens in mind. When capital markets are integrated, the fis...

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This paper revisits the traditional hierarchy of macroeconomic stabilization tools outside of the zero lower bound. In the benchmark New-Keynesian model monetary policy is always preferred to fiscal policy because fiscal policy has relative costs without delivering any relative benefits. I explore the robustness of this standard “monetary supremacy” result in three steps. First, motivated by em...

BACKGROUND Fiscal Decentralization (FD) in many cases is encouraged as a strong means of improving the efficiency and equity in the provision of public goods, such as healthcare services. This issue has urged the researchers to experimentally examine the relationship between fiscal decentralization indicators and health outcomes. In this study we examine the effect of Fiscal Decentralization in...

Appealing to the twin deficit hypothesis, according to which shocks to the government budget move the current account in the same direction, many observers call for fiscal consolidation in the US as a necessary measure to reduce the large external imbalance of this country. We reconsider the international transmission mechanism in a standard two-country two-good business cycle model, and find t...

This paper is motivated by an important puzzle that arises from the contrasting macroeconomic experience across developing regions in the recent decades. In sharp contrast to East Asia, the fiscal policies in much of Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa are characterized by large fiscal deficits and volatilities of fiscal outcomes. In order to address both large deficits and volatile fiscal out...

Despite its widespread appeal and long history in American government, the initiative process remains controversial. One of the most recurrent criticisms is that the initiative allows well organized and well financed special interests to subvert the policy process. This article reports some scientific evidence on the subversion hypothesis. For the period 19872000, the evidence shows that the in...