Suchergebnisse

This book addresses the macroeconomic implications of a country's transition to a monetary union. By using a dynamic multi-country simulation model, it is possible to pinpoint a monetary union, and repercussions produced by fiscal retrenchment policies. Interest and exchange rate effects could only be captured once a new approach including innovations in the solution methodology had been developed. Not only can we draw lessons for newly joining members to the EMU or to any other monetary union, but the analysis also implicitly offers a new explanation for the weak Euro in the first half of 1999

AbstractThis paper combines incumbency advantage and political budget cycle theory. An opportunistic politician is given two instruments: deficit‐financed transfers and propaganda. Unlike earlier analytical models, but in accordance with the empirical literature, government manipulations do actually improve re‐election chances. However, the optimal level of government manipulation depends on country characteristics, in particular the competence dispersion among potential candidates. This may explain why it is easier to detect political budget cycles in, for instance, developing countries or new democracies. Results are robust to alternative competence distribution and propaganda cost assumptions.

In a political economy model, the effect of political polarisation on a government's intertemporal choice between redistribution and public investment is shown to be similar to the effect of political uncertainty. Moreover, polarisation and uncertainty reinforce one another in their impact on public underinvestment and may ultimately lead to no investment at all. [Copyright 2007 Elsevier B.V.]

This paper offers a theoretical explanation for the determination of exchange rates under specific conditions which can/could be found in some OECD and newly industrialised countries. In an Obstfeld (1994) framework extended to incorporate government expropriation reneging on a fixed exchange rate promise unambiguously produces short term benefits, but long term losses. The choice of exchange rate regime depends on the combined effect of greediness (expropriation) and impatience (political instability), though not straightforwardly. In particular, similarly stable countries may choose different exchange rate regimes due to different levels of rent-seeking, for instance Mexico and Chile in the 1980s.

This paper addresses the puzzle that public services in some developing countries, especially in Africa, are poor despite large public expenditure. The intertemporal model here studies a government's optimal choice between redistribution and public investment. Ethnic diversity and political uncertainty reinforce one another in producing myopic government behaviour which results in underinvestment. Above some critical value of political instability, it is optimal for the government not to invest at all.

This paper studies a policymaker's optimal choice between redistribution and efficient public investment. Under political instability, there is myopic government behavior which results in underinvestment. Above some critical value of political instability, it is optimal not to invest at all. This finding also suggests that it may be rational for governments to refrain from anti-corruption investment, even if they are not rent-seeking themselves.

This paper analysis the intertemporal public finance decision under political instability. The government's choice between inflationary finance and foreign debt is constrained by an interest rate, which is affected both by market conditions and debt conditionality. The main result is that there is typically a trade-off between seigniorage taxation and foreign debt. There are two implications. First, monetary and fiscal solidity can typically not be achieved at the same time. Second, myopic behaviour produced by political instability leads to a reduction of seigniorage, not to an increase as argued, for instance, by Cukierman, Edwards and Tabellini (AER, 1992).