Fiscal Consolidation: Taking Stock of Success Factors, Impact, and Design

The pamphlet (which updates the 1995 Guidelines for Fiscal Adjustment) presents the IMF’s approach to fiscal adjustment, and focuses on the role that sound government finances play in promoting macroeconomic stability and growth. Structured around five practical questions—when to adjust, how to assess the fiscal position, what makes for successful adjustment, how to carry out adjustment, and which institutions can help—it covers topics such as tax policies, debt sustainability, fiscal responsibility laws, and transparency.

This paper explores how fiscal policy can affect medium- to long-term growth. It identifies the main channels through which fiscal policy can influence growth and distills practical lessons for policymakers. The particular mix of policy measures, however, will depend on country-specific conditions, capacities, and preferences. The paper draws on the Fund’s extensive technical assistance on fiscal reforms as well as several analytical studies, including a novel approach for country studies, a statistical analysis of growth accelerations following fiscal reforms, and simulations of an endogenous growth model.

Traditionally, economics training in public finances has focused more on tax than public expenditure issues, and within expenditure, more on policy considerations than the more mundane matters of public expenditure management. For many years, the IMF's Public Expenditure Management Division has answered specific questions raised by fiscal economists on such missions. Based on this experience, these guidelines arose from the need to provide a general overview of the principles and practices observed in three key aspects of public expenditure management: budget preparation, budget execution, and cash planning. For each aspect of public expenditure management, the guidelines identify separately the differing practices in four groups of countries - the francophone systems, the Commonwealth systems, Latin America, and those in the transition economies. Edited by Barry H. Potter and Jack Diamond, this publication is intended for a general fiscal, or a general budget, advisor interested in the macroeconomic dimension of public expenditure management.

The past several years of recession and slow recovery have raised much interest on the effect of fiscal stimulus on economic activity, even as high public debts in many countries would call for fiscal consolidation. To evaluate the delicate balance between stimulus and consolidation requires measuring the size of fiscal multipliers, which often depends on having quarterly data so that exogenous fiscal policy shocks can be identified. We estimate fiscal multipliers using a novel methodology for identifying fiscal shocks within a structural vector autoregressive approach using annual data while controling for debt feedback effects. The estimation focuses on regions with scarce quarterly data (mostly low-income countries), and uses results for advanced economies, emerging market countries, and other broad groupings for which alternative estimates are available to validate the methodology. Differently from advanced and emerging market economies, fiscal consolidation in low-income countries has only a small temporary negative effect on growth while raising medium-term output. Shifting the composition of public spending toward capital expenditure further supports long-run growth.

This paper reviews the theoretical and empirical literature on the effectiveness of fiscal policy. The focus is on the size of fiscal multipliers, and on the possibility that multipliers can turn negative (i.e., that fiscal contractions can be expansionary). The paper concludes that fiscal multipliers are overwhelmingly positive but small. However, there is some evidence of negative fiscal multipliers.

This book reveals how to create efficient institutions and coordinate policy on a transnational scale to ensure that European Union integration can best meet social needs. It offers a combined technocratic and humanist perspective on the discussion of public financial management. The state, as part of its public policy, should seek to preserve our social and environmental values, yet there are mounting imbalances in society which point to the growing role of the state in minimising them. Under such circumstances, it is worth reflecting on how new challenges could require updated, more complex formulas, to deal with crises in current times and for social and economic policy making by states and the European Union generally, which would ensure their compatibility with the world financial markets. The work offers an in-depth and unique performance analysis of European Union institutions compared to the national entities of EU Member States. It contributes to the ongoing debate on global public goods and the processes involved in managing their provision. Further, it discusses public finance management instruments, indicating their historical evolution in practice and their effectiveness measured with the Human Development Index. The author presents a proposal of how to manage global, European and national public goods across three areas: environmental protection, transnational infrastructure projects and social policy. The book analyses public financial management instruments used during the recent pandemic, making a distinction between regular and emergency instruments and assessing their effectiveness in specific economic situations. This will be of interest to researchers and students of economics and finance, as well as decision makers and practitioners from governments, international organisations and specific non-governmental organisations concerned with issues of public finance management.