Fiscal Cycles in the Caribbean

Juliana Dutra Araujo

No 09/158, IMF Working Papers from International Monetary Fund

Abstract: The sharp increase in debt in the Caribbean since the mid-1990s has focused attention on the conduct of fiscal policy in the region. This paper aims to diagnose how fiscal policy has behaved during this period by looking at three main cycles of the economy: the business, election, and natural disaster cycles. Our main findings suggest that fiscal policy has been mostly procyclical in the region, while disasters have been heavily "insured" by foreign transfers. The "when it rains, it pours" phenomena suggested by Kaminsky, Reinhart and Vegh (2004) seems to take place in the Caribbean.

Keywords: Business cycles; Capital flows; Capital inflows; Caribbean; Climatic changes; Cross country analysis; Fiscal analysis; Fiscal policy; Political economy; Regional shocks (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mac and nep-pol
Date: 2009-07-28
View list of references

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/wp/2009/wp09158.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:imf:imfwpa:09/158

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/pubs/ord_info.htm

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IMF Working Papers from International Monetary Fund
Address: International Monetary Fund, Washington, DC USA
Contact information at EDIRC.
Series data maintained by Christopher F. Baum ().