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This paper studies whether budget rigidities affect the probability of countries getting into fiscal distress and reduce the likelihood of governments performing fiscal adjustments. Budget rigidities are constraints that limit the ability of the government to change the size and structure of the public budget in the short term. Budget rigidities stem from different institutional arrangements and therefore can take different forms. To build an indicator of rigid spending that is comparable across a large set of countries, this paper employs a simple definition based on budget components that are naturally inflexible: the sum of public wages, pensions, and debt service. It decomposes this measure into a structural component and a nonstructural component. Then, the paper applies a linear probability model to a panel of 182 advanced and developing countries. A key finding is that relatively high shares of rigid (observed) components of public spending contribute to countries getting into fiscal distress and are a constraint for fiscal consolidation. The paper finds evidence that a relatively high share of nonstructural rigid spending contributes to the probability of fiscal distress and reduces the probability of fiscal consolidation. Moreover, the effect of rigid expenditure seems to be more relevant for economies with high inequality, governments with lower margins of majority, and countries with lower institutional quality. In addition, when looking at the composition of the measure of rigid expenditure, there is also some evidence that higher expenditure on pensions reduces the probability of fiscal adjustment more robustly than higher expenditure on wages.

Budget Rigidity --- Debt Burden --- Fiscal Adjustment --- Fiscal and Monetary Policy --- Fiscal Consolidation --- Fiscal Policy --- Macroeconomics and Economic Growth --- Public Sector Development --- Public Wages

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While the literature on external debt repayment performance by sovereign debtors is extensive, repayment performance vis-à-vis the International Monetary Fund has not been dealt with separately. Given differences between the Fund and other providers of financial resources, this paper considers whether it is possible to distinguish through logit analysis between the countries that make timely repayments to the Fund and those that become overdue. The paper finds that the inclusion of Fund-specific financial variables and a small number of macroeconomic variables yields a highly significant econometric model of the probability of a country incurring Fund arrears.

Exports and Imports --- International Monetary Arrangements and Institutions --- International Lending and Debt Problems --- Trade: General --- International economics --- Arrears --- External debt --- Debt service --- Debt burden --- Exports --- International trade --- Debts, External --- Cambodia

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This paper explores the relationship between external debt and poverty. A number of observers have argued that high external indebtedness is a major cause of poverty. Using the first-differenced general method of moments (GMM) estimator, the paper models the impact of external debt on poverty, measured by life expectancy, infant mortality, and gross primary enrollment rates, while duly taking into account the impact of external debt on income. The paper thus endeavors to bring together the literature that links external debt with income growth and poverty. The main conclusion is that once the effect of income on poverty has been taken into account, external indebtedness indicators have a limited but important impact on poverty.

Exports and Imports --- Poverty and Homelessness --- International Lending and Debt Problems --- Health: General --- Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty: General --- International economics --- Health economics --- Poverty & precarity --- Health --- Poverty --- External debt --- Debt burden --- Debt service --- Debts, External --- Guinea

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This paper analyzes the causes of growth of Africa’s debt burden, and discusses the factors that induced African countries to seek external loans as well as the factors affecting the supply of external financing. The paper studies the development of some measures of debt burden for different categories of African debtors, and arrives at a hypothesis regarding feasible levels of debt and debt service ratios. In a final section, the paper discusses the options for debt relief using a simulation of payments ability.

Debt burden --- Debt service ratios --- Debt service --- Debts, External --- Exports and Imports --- Exports --- External debt --- Interest payments --- International economics --- International Lending and Debt Problems --- International trade --- Trade: General --- Nigeria

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The expansionary fiscal contraction (EFC) hypothesis states that fiscal austerity can increase output or consumption when a country is under heavy debt burdens because it sends positive signal about the country's solvency situation and long-term economic wellbeing. Empirical tests of this hypothesis have suffered from identification concerns due to data sources and empirical methodology. Using a sample of OECD countries between 1978 and 2014, this paper combines new IMF narrative data and the proxy structural Vector Auto-regression (SVAR) method to examine whether fiscal austerities can be expansionary when debt levels are high. Fiscal austerities are measured as 1) narrative fiscal shocks and 2) structural shocks from a proxy SVAR. Additionally, this paper uses a model-based approach to determine the cutoff debt level beyond which EFC is expected to be observed. This paper finds empirical evidence in support of the EFC hypothesis for OECD countries: results for output are driven by changes in tax rates and are robust to how one defines a high-debt regime and how one measures austerity.

Austerity --- Debt Burden --- Debt Sustainability --- Economic Crisis --- Economic Shock --- External Debt --- Fiscal Adjustment --- Fiscal Consolidation --- Fiscal Policy --- Fiscal Shock --- International Economics and Trade --- Macroeconomic Management --- Macroeconomics and Economic Growth --- Structural Vector Autoregression