This note presents data on Congressional fiscal policy by party and chamber, using the National Taxpayers Union annual vote index for 1979-2002. NTU scores are presented with and without adjusting for interchamber and intertemporal movements of the policy space over which the scores are calculated. Results indicate that the parties and chambers are much more stable over time, and exhibit a slig...

We study the role of anonymous markets in which trades cannot be monitored by the government. We adopt a Mirrlees approach to analyze economies in which agents have private information and a benevolent government controls optimal redistributive tax policy. While unrestricted access to anonymous markets reduces the set of policy instruments available to the government, it also limits the scope o...

We investigate the short-term effects of fiscal adjustment on economic activity in 20 OECD countries from 1970 to 2009.We compare two approaches: the traditional approach based on changes in cyclically adjusted primary balance (CAPB) and the narrative approach based on historical records. Proponents of the latter argue that it captures discretionary fiscal adjustment more accurately than the tr...

This session of the conference is titled: “Fiscal Policy in a Monetary Union”. What is a central banker’s role in such a discussion? Well, Mervyn King once said: “Central banks are often accused of being obsessed with inflation. This is untrue. If they are obsessed with anything, it is with fiscal policy.” As so often, Mervyn King was right, we central bankers are indeed obsessed with fiscal po...

Pacific Economic Bulletin Volume 21 Number 2 2006 © Asia Pacific Press Granger causality tests confirm the results from the bounds-testing approach of the long-run relationships between Fiji’s economic growth and fiscal and monetary policies and exports. Government expenditure, representing fiscal policy, is assessed to have a greater impact than monetary policy and exports on Fiji’s gross dome...

Our work in the Czech Republic and in FYR Macedonia demonstrates the importance of including contingent liabilities when assessing the magnitude of the true fiscal adjustment, and when analyzing fiscal sustainability. To the extent that explicit expenditures are shifted off-budget or replaced by the issuance of guarantees, the achieved improvement in fiscal balances is overstated. For the Czech...

This paper examines the different types of incentives that countries face when deciding to take part in a federal fiscal system. The optimal degree of participation depends on the structural parameters of the economy and on the properties of the federal fiscal system. Firstly, the paper examines the case of federal fiscal systems that work as simple insurance arrangements. Secondly, a mixed ins...

Australian governments have recently moved from cash accounting to accrual accounting. In doing so they have made simultaneous use of two rival accrual accounting frameworks: AAS 31 and GFS. AAS 31 and GFS operating result measures differ significantly. To date, the AAS 31 framework has enjoyed primacy. This paper evaluates these two frameworks, and suggests that GFS is superior. Accrual accoun...

This paper examines logic and evidence bearing on the efficacy of fiscal policy in severely depressed economies. In normal times central banks offset the effects of fiscal policy. This keeps the policy-relevant multiplier near zero. It leaves no space for expansionary fiscal policy as a stabilization policy tool. But when interest rates are constrained by the zero nominal lower bound, discretio...

petroleum upstream service contracts possess different aspects of legal, contractual, fiscal, economic, technical and environmental nature. in this research, efforts have been made to review one of the aspects of the petroleum upstream contracts which have been far too little considered, namely the fiscal system of upstream service contracts. since every service contract possesses its own indep...