India is the second most populous country in the world and also one of the poorest. From the late 1940s to 1980, India's per capita income grew at an average annual rate of only two percent. Expansionist economic reforms during the 1980s boosted economic growth but also unfortunately resulted in high inflation and a balance of payments crisis. As a consequence, in 1991 the government announced sweeping new changes in economic policies. Economic Policy Reforms and the Indian Economy evaluates the effects of those changes and identifies areas of the Indian economy still in urgent need of reform. After an overview of Indian economic policies and development since independence, papers focus on the country's fiscal situation, the environment for private economic activity, education, the reservation of certain activities for small-scale industry, and determinants of differentials in rates of growth across the different Indian states. Contributors include respected academic specialists on India and policy reform, high-level Indian administrators, and present and past policymakers.

The recent recession has brought fiscal policy back to the forefront, with economists and policy makers struggling to reach a consensus on highly political issues like tax rates and government spending. At the heart of the debate are fiscal multipliers, whose size and sensitivity determine the power of such policies to influence economic growth. Fiscal Policy after the Financial Crisis focuses on the effects of fiscal stimuli and increased government spending, with contributions that consider the measurement of the multiplier effect and its size. In the face of uncertainty over the sustainability of recent economic policies, further contributions to this volume discuss the merits of alternate means of debt reduction through decreased government spending or increased taxes. A final section examines how the short-term political forces driving fiscal policy might be balanced with aspects of the long-term planning governing monetary policy. A direct intervention in timely debates, Fiscal Policy after the Financial Crisis offers invaluable insights about various responses to the recent financial crisis.

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.

"Anne O. Krueger has assembled and deftly summarized an excellent set of papers on the major issues in economic reform in developing countries at the turn of the century."--Stanley Fischer, International Monetary Fund The papers and commentary collected in this volume discuss vital contemporary thinking on economic policy reform--in particular, the difficulties that leave so much of the world mired in poverty. Distinguished contributors address issues ranging from education and privatization to exchange rates and telecommunications reform, providing an excellent overview of the current situation and the possible paths into the future.

This report investigates how tax structures can best be designed to support GDP per capita growth.

The rapid emergence of East Asia as an important geopolitical-economic entity has been one of the most visible and striking changes in the international economy in recent years. With that emergence has come an increased need for understanding the problems of interdependence. As a step toward meeting this need, the National Bureau of Economic Research joined with the Korea Development Institute to sponsor this volume, which focuses on the complexities of tax reform in a global economy. Experts from Taiwan, Korea, the Philippines, Japan, and Thailand, as well as the United States, Canada, and Israel examine the major tax programs of the 1980s and their domestic and international economic effects. The analyses reveal similarities between the United States and countries in East Asia in political constraints on policy making, and taken together they show how growing interdependence interacts with domestic economic and political concerns to affect issues as politically vital as tax reform. Economists, policymakers, and members of the business community will benefit from these studies.

What are fiscal policy rules? What are the principal benefits and drawbacks associated with various fiscal rules, particularly compared with alternative approaches to fiscal adjustment? Can fiscal rules contribute to long-run sustainability and welfare without sacrificing short-run stabilization? If so, what characteristics of fiscal rules make this contribution most effective? And in what circumstances and contexts, if any should the IMF encourage its member countries to adopt fiscal rules? This paper seeks to identify sensible fiscal policy rules that can succeed, if chosen by a member country, as an alternative to descretionary fiscal rules.

This book explores the problems of fiscal policy as an instrument of economic and social development in the modern environment, primarily focusing on the transition economies of Eastern Europe, Caucasus, and Central Asia. Evaluating the transformational experience in these countries, this work meets a need for a critical analysis in the aftermath of the 1990s market liberalization reforms, of current trends and to outline the roadmap for future development.

Fiscal policy in Latin America has been guided primarily by short-term liquidity targets whose observance was taken as the main exponent of fiscal prudence, with attention focused almost exclusively on the levels of public debt and the cash deficit. Very little attention was paid to the effects of fiscal policy on growth and on macroeconomic volatility over the cycle. Important issues such as the composition of public expenditures (and its effects on growth), the ability of fiscal policy to stabilize cyclical fluctuations, and the currency composition of public debt were largely neglected. As a result, fiscal policy has often amplified cyclical volatility and dampened growth. 'Fiscal Policy, Stabilization, and Growth' explores the conduct of fiscal policy in Latin America and its consequences for macroeconomic stability and long-term growth. In particular, the book highlights the procyclical and anti-investment biases embedded in the region's fiscal policies, explores their causes and macroeconomic consequences, and asesses their possible solutions.

In the past decade, China was able to carry out economic reform without political reform, while the Soviet Union attempted the opposite strategy. How did China succeed at economic market reform without changing communist rule? Susan Shirk shows that Chinese communist political institutions are more flexible and less centralized than their Soviet counterparts were. Shirk pioneers a rational choice institutional approach to analyze policy-making in a non-democratic authoritarian country and to explain the history of Chinese market reforms from 1979 to the present. Drawing on extensive interviews with high-level Chinese officials, she pieces together detailed histories of economic reform policy decisions and shows how the political logic of Chinese communist institutions shaped those decisions. Combining theoretical ambition with the flavor of on-the-ground policy-making in Beijing, this book is a major contribution to the study of reform in China and other communist countries. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1994. In the past decade, China was able to carry out economic reform without political reform, while the Soviet Union attempted the opposite strategy. How did China succeed at economic market reform without changing communist rule? Susan Shirk shows that Chine