© L p Abstract: This paper investigates the relationship between the magnitude of automatic stabilizers in the tax and transfer systems of 19 EU countries and the US, and discretionary fiscal stimulus packages passed by these countries during the recent economic crisis. In particular, we ask whether countries with larger automatic stabilizers have enacted smaller discretionary fiscal stimulus p...

Recent events have renewed the debate on the desirability of imposing institutional constraints on government policy. This paper investigates how policy constraints discipline the behavior of discretionary governments in dynamic stochastic monetary economies and evaluates the welfare properties of such restrictions. Across a variety of possible shocks, the best policy is to impose a minimum sur...

This paper studies whether fiscal policy plays a stabilizing role in the context of import food price shocks. More precisely, assesses dampens adverse effect shocks on household consumption. Based panel 70 low and middle-income countries over period 1980-2012, finds that negatively significantly affect consumption, but this appears to be mitigated by discretionary government notably through sub...

In developing countries, weak institutional quality can increase the probability of applying discretionary policies and can have a great impact on their double-digit inflation. Surico (2008) calculated inflation bias, but he considered just monetary policy and he did not pay attention to the institutions. Therefore, we design a model which considers the discretion in monetary and fiscal policie...

We investigate whether fiscal rules help to reduce the extent of policy procyclicalitydhow government expenditure policy responds to GDP– in a dynamic panel framework with 81 advanced, emerging and developing countries over 1985e2012. We construct two new fiscal rule indices and investigate whether rules help to dampen procyclical policies. We condition our empirical specifications on the degre...

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The theoretical literature on common pool problems in fiscal policy suggests that government fragmentation increases public expenditures. In parliamentary regimes, the fragmentation hypothesis refers to (i) coalition governments and (ii) cabinet size. This paper explores the effect of coalition governments and cabinet size on public expenditures with panel data covering all 16 German States ove...

A range of energy-economy models forecast losses to members of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) should the Kyoto Protocol come into force. These forecasts are a powerful influence in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change negotiations. They are used by OPEC to advance the agenda on the impacts of response measures, covertly arguing for compensation for...