This paper investigates the short-term effects of fiscal consolidation on economic activity in OECD economies. We examine contemporaneous policy documents to identify changes in fiscal policy motivated by a desire to reduce the budget deficit and not by responding to prospective economic conditions. Using this new dataset, our estimates suggest that fiscal consolidation has contractionary effects on private demand and GDP. By contrast, estimates based on conventional measures of the fiscal policy stance used in the literature support the expansionary fiscal contractions hypothesis but appear to be biased toward overstating expansionary effects. (JEL: E32, E62, H20, H5, N10)

Using a novel empirical approach and an extensive dataset developed by the Fiscal Affairs Department of the IMF, we find no evidence of any particular debt threshold above which medium-term growth prospects are dramatically compromised. Furthermore, we find the debt trajectory can be as important as the debt level in understanding future growth prospects, since countries with high but declining debt appear to grow equally as fast as countries with lower debt. Notwithstanding this, we find some evidence that higher debt is associated with a higher degree of output volatility. JEL Classification Numbers: H63, O40

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We assess the extent to which the period of great U.S. macroeconomic stability since the mid-1980s can be accounted for by changes in oil shocks and the oil share in GDP. To do this we estimate a DSGE model with an oil-producing sector before and after 1984 and perform counterfactual simulations. We nest two popular explanations for the Great Moderation: (1) smaller (non-oil) real shocks; and (2) better monetary policy. We fi nd that the reduced oil share accounted for as much as one-third of the infl ation moderation and 13% of the growth moderation, while smaller oil shocks accounted for 11% of the infl ation moderation and 7% of the growth moderation. This notwithstanding, better monetary policy explains the bulk of the infl ation moderation, while most of the growth moderation is explained by smaller TFP shocks.

We use a semi structural model to estimate neutral rates in the United States. Our Bayesian estimation incorporates prior information on the output gap and potential output (based on a production function approach) and accounts for unconventional monetary policies at the ZLB by using estimates of "shadow" policy rates. We find that our approach provides more plausible results than standard maximum likelihood estimates for the unobserved variables in the model. Results show a significant trend decline in the neutral real rate over time, driven only in part by a decline in potential growth whereas other factors (including excess global savings) matter. Neutral rates likely turned negative during the Global Financial Crisis and are expected to increase only gradually looking forward.

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Crises on external sovereign debt are typically defined as defaults. Such a definition adequately captures debt-servicing difficulties in the 1980s, a period of numerous defaults on bank loans. However, defining defaults as debt crises is problematic for the 1990s, when sovereign bond markets emerged. Not only were there very few defaults in the 1990s, but liquidity indicators do not play any role in explaining defaults in this period. In order to overcome the resulting dearth of data on defaults and capture the evolution of debt markets in the 1990s, we define debt crises as events occurring when either a country defaults or its bond spreads are above a critical threshold. We find that, when information from bond markets is included, standard indicators—solvency and liquidity measures, as well as macroeconomic control variables—are significant. IMF Staff Papers (2007) 54, 306–337. doi:10.1057/palgrave.imfsp.9450010

We model oil production decisions from optimizing principles rather than assuming exogenous oil price shocks and show that the presence of a dominant oil producer leads to sizable static and dynamic distortions of the production process. Under our calibration, the static distortion costs the U.S. around 1.6% of GDP per year. In addition, the dynamic distortion, reflected in inefficient fluctuations of the oil price markup, generates a trade-off between stabilizing inflation and aligning output with its efficient level. Our model is a step away from discussing the effects of exogenous oil price variations and toward analyzing the implications of the underlying shocks that cause oil prices to change in the first place. Copyright (c) 2010 The Ohio State University.