During the 1980s and 1990 ...

Inspired by the experience of some advanced economies, a number of emerging market economies have recently adopted rules limiting the budget deficit, expenditure level, or indebtedness of the public sector, while others consider them for eventual adoption. This volume brings together policy analysts to discuss the rationale, suitability, and usefulness of fiscal policy rules in emerging market economies. Grouped under three main parts (political economy and macroeconomic setting; design issues at the national level; design issues at the subnational level), the chapters have a practical orientation, based on conceptual grounding.

This paper proposes a sovereign asset and liability management framework for analyzing the inter-relationships between debt management, fiscal and monetary policies. It illustrates the consequences of uncoordinated policy mix and extends Sargent and Wallace (1981 and 1993) by including debt management. Examples of policy games played by fiscal, monetary, and debt management authorities reinforce the importance of policy separation and coordination to prevent domination by one authority over another which could lead to inconsistent policy mix.

Using a dataset covering a large sample of emerging economies (EMEs), we study the relationship between debt and economic performance in bad times. While previous research has shown that private debt buildups exacerbate the duration and intensity of recessions in advanced economies (AEs), we document that this effect is very pronounced in EMEs as well. Moreover, although rapid public debt buildups are unlikely to be the primary trigger of financial crises, in EMEs they are associated with deeper and longer recessions than in AEs. Part of this difference is explained by a less supportive fiscal policy in EMEs during crises.

The World Economic Outlook, published twice a year in English, French, Spanish, and Arabic, presents IMF staff economists' analyses of global economic developments during the near and medium term. Chapters give an overview of the world economy; consider issues affecting industrial countries, and economics in transition to market; and address topics of pressing current interest. Annexes, boxes, charts, and an extensive statistical appendix augment the text.

This paper examines two main aspects of the interaction between fiscal and monetary policy in emerging market economies. First, it explores the interest rate-inflation relationship in economies with different levels of external and domestic public debt using panel- and crosssection data. The results show that interest rate-inflation elasticity weakens with debt/GDP and external debt/GDP. Second, it utilizes high-frequency data from Brazil, Turkey, and Poland to examine how market-determined variables react to economic news. The results suggest that when vulnerabilities are high, budget news has the most significant impact on country spreads and interest rates, and the impact of monetary policy is weakened.

This paper touches on the interaction between monetary policy, fiscal policy and public debt management. The first part looks at public debt sustainability and monetary policy. When measuring the fiscal stance, data such as current fiscal income and expenditure, the scale of public debt, and the coverage of budget revenue and expenditure should be properly monitored. In addition, factors that could influence the mid-term fiscal stance should be taken into consideration. Central bank assets may not be used to offset public debt, and pension funds are not in practice used to offset gross government debt in most economies. To some extent, oil and commodity stability funds held by resource-abundant economies may be used to offset gross government debt. Monetary policy is influenced by the financing of the fiscal deficit by way of bond issuance. The second part is about the development of money markets, the maturity and yield curves of domestic government bonds, and the deepening of domestic financial markets and financial stability in China. The concluding part concerns the central bank and public debt management. There is no need for the central bank in economies with a well developed treasury bond market to issue debt of its own. In emerging economies, a regular rollover issuance of central bank debt may help to form a consecutive short-term risk-free yield curve, serving as a benchmark for pricing in money and bond markets. Central banks involved in public debt management need to coordinate closely with the debt management agency on the policy objectives for various macro control instruments associated with fiscal policy, monetary policy and public debt management.Full publication: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2205164 Fiscal Policy, Public Debt and Monetary Policy in Emerging Market Economies.

This paper applies stochastic simulation methods to assess debt sustainability in emerging market economies and provide probability measures for projections of the external and public debt burden over the medium term. The vulnerability of public debt to adverse shocks is determined by a number of interrelated factors, including the volatility of output, financial fragility, the endogenous response of the risk premium, and sudden stops in private capital flows. The vulnerability of external debt is sensitive to the determination of the exchange rate and to the pricing of traded goods. We show that fiscal policy can act in a preemptive manner to prevent the debt burden from rising significantly over the medium term. This requires flexibility in fiscal planning, which many emerging market economies lack. Emerging market economies therefore face a difficult trade-off between managing the risk of a debt crisis and pursuing other important fiscal policy objectives.

Recent crises in Argentina and Turkey illustrate the continuing importance of fiscal problems in precipitating financial crises, and whatever their cause, financial crises always have important fiscal dimensions. market economies, particularly with regards to the fiscal causes of crises; fiscal vulnerability indicators which can help to predict crises; whether fiscal variables explain the severity of crises; and the fiscal consequences of crises. The study uses a large set of fiscal variables for 29 emerging market economies over the period 1970-2000; as well as detailed case studies of 11 recent crises in emerging market economies to examine some of the structural and institutional dimensions of fiscal vulnerability.