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AbstractContemporary ecological and climate crises have thrown into sharp relief debates around what roles and responsibilities, if any, international security bodies ought to have in addressing environment-related matters. Building on a wider catalogue of the United Nations Security Council's practice concerning the environment, in this article, we provide a snapshot of the Council's practice pertaining in particular to the environment and armed conflict. In addition to setting out key aspects relating to the personal, geographical and temporal scope of that practice, we identify four armed-conflict-related substantive themes arising in the Security Council's actions in this area: (1) relations between conflict and natural resources; (2) relations between conflict and adverse environment-related phenomena; (3) relations between conflict and chemical and biological weapons; and (4) adverse impacts of conflict on the environment. Through this examination, we aim in part to provide stakeholders with a more extensive and detailed basis on which to evaluate what actions the Council has taken – and, by inference, which actions it has not taken – with respect to the environment and armed conflict.

Este documento retoma el estudio de la relación empírica entre la políticafiscal y la estabilidad macroeconómica. Nuestro supuesto básico es que, pordefinición, el funcionamiento de los estabilizadores automáticas deberíasiempre y en todas partes contribuir a una mayor estabilidad macroeconómica(producción y consumo). Sin embargo, dos hechos estilizados parecen estar endesacuerdo con esa predicción. En primer lugar, el efecto moderador de losestabilizadores automáticos parece haberse debilitado en las economíasavanzadas entre los años 1990 y 2006. En segundo lugar, los estabilizadoresautomáticos no parecen ser eficaces en las economías en desarrollo. Nuestroanálisis aborda estos enigmas aparentes por medio del análisis del papelambivalente del gobierno como un amortiguador e inductor de shocks sobrelos determinantes de la volatilidad macroeconómica en el tiempo. Losresultados proporcionan un fuerte apoyo a la opinión de que la estabilizaciónfiscal opera principalmente a través de los estabilizadores automáticos.Palabras clave: Estabilización Económica; Política Fiscal; Estabilidad FiscalClasificación JEL: E62; H6 AbstractThe paper revisits the empirical link between fi scal policy and macroeconomicstability. Our basic presumption is that by defi nition, the operationof automatic stabilizers should always and everywhere contribute to greatermacroeconomic stability (output and consumption). However, two stylizedfacts seem at odds with that prediction. First, the moderating effect of automaticstabilizers appears to have weakened in advanced economies betweenthe mid-1990s and 2006 (the end of our main sample). Second, automaticstabilizers do not seem to be effective in developing economies. Our analysisaddresses these apparent puzzles by accounting for the government's ambivalentrole as a shock absorber and a shock inducer for determinants ofmacroeconomic volatility over time. Results provide strong support for theview that fi scal stabilization operates mainly through automatic stabilizers.Keywords: Economic stabilization ; Fiscal policy ; Fiscal stability.JEL Classifi cation: E62; H6.

The paper revisits the empirical link between fiscal policy and macroeconomic stability. Our basic presumption is that by definition, the operation of automatic stabilizers should always and everywhere contribute to greater macroeconomic stability (output and consumption). However, two stylized facts seem at odds with that prediction. First, the moderating effect of automaticstabilizers appears to have weakened in advanced economies betweenthe mid-1990s and 2006 (the end of our main sample). Second, automatic stabilizers do not seem to be effective in developing economies. Our analysisaddresses these apparent puzzles by accounting for the government's ambivalent role as a shock absorber and a shock inducer for determinants of macroeconomic volatility over time. Results provide strong support for theview that fiscal stabilization operates mainly through automatic stabilizers. ; Este documento retoma el estudio de la relación empírica entre la políticafiscal y la estabilidad macroeconómica. Nuestro supuesto básico es que, pordefinición, el funcionamiento de los estabilizadores automáticas deberíasiempre y en todas partes contribuir a una mayor estabilidad macroeconómica(producción y consumo). Sin embargo, dos hechos estilizados parecen estar endesacuerdo con esa predicción. En primer lugar, el efecto moderador de losestabilizadores automáticos parece haberse debilitado en las economíasavanzadas entre los años 1990 y 2006. En segundo lugar, los estabilizadoresautomáticos no parecen ser eficaces en las economías en desarrollo. Nuestroanálisis aborda estos enigmas aparentes por medio del análisis del papelambivalente del gobierno como un amortiguador e inductor de shocks sobrelos determinantes de la volatilidad macroeconómica en el tiempo. Losresultados proporcionan un fuerte apoyo a la opinión de que la estabilizaciónfiscal opera principalmente a través de los estabilizadores automáticos.Palabras clave: Estabilización Económica; Política Fiscal; Estabilidad FiscalClasificación JEL: E62; H6 AbstractThe paper revisits the empirical link between fi scal policy and macroeconomicstability. Our basic presumption is that by defi nition, the operationof automatic stabilizers should always and everywhere contribute to greatermacroeconomic stability (output and consumption). However, two stylizedfacts seem at odds with that prediction. First, the moderating effect of automaticstabilizers appears to have weakened in advanced economies betweenthe mid-1990s and 2006 (the end of our main sample). Second, automaticstabilizers do not seem to be effective in developing economies. Our analysisaddresses these apparent puzzles by accounting for the government's ambivalentrole as a shock absorber and a shock inducer for determinants ofmacroeconomic volatility over time. Results provide strong support for theview that fi scal stabilization operates mainly through automatic stabilizers.Keywords: Economic stabilization ; Fiscal policy ; Fiscal stability.JEL Classifi cation: E62; H6.