Jean-Louis COMBES

An important literature shows that inflation targeting (IT) adoption improves fiscal discipline. Our impact assessment analysis performed in a large sample of 89 developing countries over three decades shows that this favorable impact covers a composition effect: IT adoption is found to reduce more current expenditure compared with public investment in IT countries relative to non-IT countries. This finding is robust to various alternative specification, related to the structure of the sample, the measurement of the IT regime, or the estimation method. Consequently, aside from its acknowledged benefits for monetary policy goals, IT appears as an efficient tool to strengthen fiscal policy in developing countries towards lower and more productive public expenditure.

Cet article évalue l’impact des transferts des migrants et de la variabilité climatique sur la sécurité alimentaire des ménages au Burkina Faso. Il s’appuie sur une base de données originale construite à partir de l’enquête 2009 de la Banque mondiale sur les migrations et les transferts. Une analyse en composantes principales permet d’élaborer un indice de sécurité alimentaire. L’indice standardisé de précipitation et d’évapotranspiration (SPEI) caractérise la situation climatique dans les différenes régions. Les résultats économétriques corroborent l’effet négatif de la détérioration des conditions climatiques sur la sécurité alimentaire des ménages. En revanche, les transferts de fonds renforcent la sécurité alimentaire et atténuent l’effet négatif du SPEI sur la sécurité alimentaire. Ces résultats sont robustes à un biais d’endogénéité potentiel des transferts en utilisant la distance au chemin de fer des ménages et l’éducation des migrants comme instruments.

This literature review covers recent works dealing with the ultimate causes of economic development. The article first considers the driving role of the rules of the social game. Then the focus shifts to the role of historical circumstances. Finally, we seek to understand how geography can influence development paths. These studies are multidisciplinary and use new databases. The results should not imply that there is a cultural, historical or geographical determinism. That is, historical contingencies and economic policy decisions can foster lasting changes in development trajectories.

This paper investigates the relationship between public debt and environmental debt—reflecting CO carbon concentration. First, using an endogenous growth model in which pollution abatement spending can be financed by public debt, we show that public debt and environmental debt are complementary in the long run and usually substitutes in the short run. Second, these predictions are empirically confirmed: in particular, a 1% increase in the public debt ratio leads to an increase of 0.74% in cumulative CO per capita in the long run. Our findings emphasize the difficulty of defining policies that jointly serve both the economic (fiscal) and the environmental goals, due to the short- and long-run conflicting environmental effects of policies that either reduce or do not constrain public debt.

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Depuis près de 15 ans, l’Union européenne (UE) ne cesse d’être confrontée à des périodes de turbulences (crise des subprimes en 2008, crise économique et sociale, puis crise des finances publiques à partir de 2010, et enfin crise sanitaire depuis 2020). Les États membres et les institutions européennes ont dû réagir en conciliant à la fois les fragilités des finances publiques nationales, les contraintes imposées par le cadre communautaire (programmation pluriannuelle sur 7 ans, ressources propres plafonnées, interdiction de déficit public communautaire) et la nécessité d’intervenir rapidement et efficacement à l’échelle européenne pour faire face à la crise économique. S’ajoutent à cela des effets différenciés selon que les pays appartiennent ou non à la zone euro.

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This paper examines the cyclicality of provincial expenditure inChina during the period 1978–2013. Using panel data for analysis, it assesses whether provincial expenditure has been pro-cyclical. Pro-cyclicality is found to be a regular feature of provincial fiscal policy. This pro-cyclicality occurs both in times of low and high growth rates and has markedly intensified since 1994 with the increased autonomy of provinces. The paper further finds that the pro-cyclicality bias is mitigated when financial constraints are relaxed, the remaining political life of the governor is long, government efficiency is strong, corruption incidence is low, and governments are large.

This paper aims at assessing the determinants of Amazon deforestation, emphasizing the role played by off-farm income. Initially an economic model is provided which relates off-farm income to deforestation patterns. Subsequently, empirical implications are tested using data from the 2006 Brazilian Agricultural Census. Estimation results suggest that higher off-farm incomes are associated with reduced deforestation rates. In fact, higher off-farm incomes might increase the opportunity cost associated with agricultural activities. The latter option becomes less attractive and farmers dedicate less time to farm activities, thereby reducing deforestation pressure. Results also show that smallholders respond less to the increase in the returns from off-farm activities when compared to largeholders, which matches our hypothesis of labor market imperfections regarding off-farm activities.

This paper discusses the extent to which individual and contextual level factors influence the likelihood of individuals’ willingness to pay (WTP) to prevent environmental pollution. A multilevel probit regression framework was set up to explain WTP to prevent environmental pollution. We use data from the World Values Survey (WVS), which contains socio-economic and socio-demographic information, and merged it with country level covariates. Compared to many previous studies, our dataset encompasses a more indepth set of individual level covariates. We find that rich people, individuals with higher education, as well as those who possess post-materialist values are more likely to be concerned about environmental pollution. This study reveals that in developed countries, 90% of country variation in WTP to prevent environmental pollution can be explained by individual characteristics. This portion reduces to 80% in the case of developing countries. An interesting feature in our study is the ability to investigate the effect of contextual factors on individuals’ willingness to contribute for the environment. We observe that both democracy and government stability reduce individuals’ intention to donate to prevent environmental damage mainly in developed countries.

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Improving access to man-made capital through domestic credit and public spending is a step towards development. Developing countries rely also on natural capital, which may generate possible conflicts between environment and development targets. Taking the case of land-use and deforestation, this paper revisits the links between man-made and natural capital. Relying on a model of income maximization, we theoretically assess how better access to man-made capital through public spending and credit, influences forest cover loss. Econometric investigations, over the period 2001–2012, show that forest cover loss is positively influenced by credit and public spending. A better access to capital is thus detrimental to the forest. This can be interpreted as a Tinbergen rule : the development objective of facilitating access to man-made capital cannot be tackled without facing the objective of environmental protection.

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We examine how inflation targeting (IT) and fiscal rules (FR) affect inflation and fiscal performance in a large panel of countries during 1990–2009. In line with theory, both FR and IT appear to shape monetary and fiscal outcomes. Significant cross-effects seem to exist as IT strengthens fiscal performance, whereas the combination of FR and IT tends to be associated with more disciplined macroeconomic policies than if only one of these institutions operates. Our findings suggest that IT and FR affect the coordination of the policy mix, and point to potential benefits of reforming macroeconomic frameworks in a holistic fashion.

We investigate the reaction of fiscal policy to the business cycle in a panel of 56 developed, emerging and developing economies over 1990–2011. While we strengthen the established finding that fiscal policy is counter-cyclical, additional outcomes emerge from this study. We reveal a non-linear response of fiscal policy to the business cycle, conditional upon the outstanding debt stock. Interestingly, when the public debt-to-GDP ratio goes beyond our endogenously estimated threshold of 87%, fiscal policy turns pro-cyclical. To tackle this effect, we explore the role of fiscal rules (FR). We unveil heterogeneous impacts among FR, as only some of them may mitigate fiscal policy procyclicality in high-debt contexts.

Based on a sample of 38 emerging economies, we find that inflation targeting (IT) adoption improves sovereign debt risk. Next, we show that this favorable effect is sensitive to several structural characteristics, and to the considered time span. Finally, the measure of sovereign risk (sovereign debt ratings or government bond yield spreads) and the IT form (full-fledged or partial) equally influence the effect of IT adoption on sovereign debt risk. Thus, our paper provides valuable insights regarding IT implementation as a device for improving emerging market economies’ access to international financial markets.

Using a remotely sensed pixel data set, we develop a multilevel model and propensity scoreweighting with multilevel data to assess the impact of protected areas on deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon. These techniques allow taking into account location bias, contextual bias and the dependence of spatial units. Our results show that the hierarchical structure of the database matters and should be considered in the assessment of protected areas effectiveness. Our results also suggest that protected areas have slowed down deforestation between 2005 and 2009, whatever the type of governance. The effectiveness of protected areas differs according to socioeconomic and environmental variables measured at municipal level. For instance, indigenous protected areas are found to be marginally more efficient than sustainable use areas and integral use areas. Protected Areas that were more recently implemented are also found to avoid more deforestation than older ones. This corroborates the idea that recently created protected areas in the Brazilian Amazon have a greater agricultural potential.

Cet article propose un survol de la théorie des biens communs. La notion de bien commun et la possible surexploitation de ce type de ressource sont tout d’abord exposées. Ensuite, plusieurs illustrations sont apportées telles que le réchauffement climatique, la déforestation, la congestion urbaine et le déficit budgétaire. À chaque fois, les moyens d’éviter la tragédie des communs sont présentés. Il s’avère que dans chacun des cas, ce sont essentiellement des solutions étatiques qui sont privilégiées, contrairement à des arrangements institutionnels ou des solutions de marché.

In spite of the rapidly growing research on fiscal multipliers over recent years, little evidence has been so far accumulated in developing and emerging economies. This paper investigates the nature and the size of fiscal multipliers in Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries. Unlike most of the existing literature, we draw upon a panel vector error correction model, which appropriately captures the common long-term path of CEE countries, while allowing for different short-run dynamics, in an integrated setup. Our main results show that the spending multiplier is positive, but low on average. Moreover, its sign, significance and magnitude vary across CEE. Finally, both impulse and cumulative fiscal multipliers are sensitive to a wide range of CEE characteristics, including the exchange rate regime, the level of economic development, the fiscal stance and the openness degree.

Foreign aid is a sizable source of government financing for several developing countries and its allocation matters for the conduct of fiscal policy. This article revisits the fiscal effects of shifts in aid dependency in 59 developing countries from 1960 to 2010. It identifies structural shifts in aid dependency and uses treatment effect methods to assess the fiscal effects of aid. It finds that shifts in aid dependency are frequent and have significant fiscal effects in developing countries. In addition to the traditional evidences of tax and investment displacement and ‘aid illusion,’ we show that upward shifts and downward shifts in aid dependency have asymmetric effects on fiscal accounts in developing countries. Large aid inflows undermine tax capacity and public investment while large reductions in aid inflows tend to keep recipients’ fiscal behaviour intact. Moreover, the tax displacement effect tends to be temporary while the impacts on expenditure items tend to last. Finally, we find that the undesirable fiscal effects of aid are more pronounced in countries with low governance score and low absorptive capacity.

We revisit the link between crises and exchange rate regimes (ERR). Using a wide panel of 90 developed and developing countries over the period 1980-2009, we find that corner ERR are not more prone to crises compared to intermediate ERR. This finding holds for different types of crises (banking, currency and debt), and is robust to a wide set of alternative specifications. Consequently, we clearly break down the traditional bipolar view: countries that aim at preventing crisis episodes should focus less on the choice of the ERR, and instead implement sound structural macroeconomic policies.

We analyze the relationship between the introduction of a sovereign bond market (BM) and tax revenue mobilization behavior, using a large sample of 119 developing countries. Propensity Scores Matching estimations reveal that BM participation significantly fosters domestic tax revenue mobilization. Moreover, we find that this favorable effect is sensitive to BM countries' characteristics, namely the stance of monetary and fiscal policies, the exchange rate regime, the level of economic development, and the degree of financial openness and financial development. Finally, our results show that BM participation fosters internal taxes and reduces their instability, compared to international trade taxes. These findings highlight the strength of BM in promoting structural reforms in developing countries, through encouraging them to increase their tax effort and even by contributing to some extent to the fiscal transition process.

This article provides new evidence on the effect of a difference in climate policy between trading partners on their bilateral trade flow for a sample of developed and developing countries over the 1980-2010 period. It innovates in two aspects. First, while previous studies have used partial measures of climate regulation, we estimate a measure of performance of a country’s domestic efforts for climate mitigation. This measure is the difference between observed CO2 emissions levels and “structural” emissions, i.e. the emissions predicted by the determinants of environmental degradation as identified and modelled in the literature. Second, the effect of these efforts on bilateral trade flows is assessed using a gravity model. A difference in domestic efforts between trading partners has no effect on aggregate trade flows. Put differently, weak domestic efforts do not imply comparative advantage. In addition, similarities in domestic efforts, whether they are lax or stringent, are not shown to affect trade flows. These results are not influenced by the goods’ characteristics (manufactured goods or raw materials) and are robust for different estimators.

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The objective of the article is to assess whether remittances have an influence on political manipulation, which may occur prior to an election, through an increase in the government consumption-to-GDP ratio. We combine data from the National Elections across Democracy and Autocracy data set compiled and discussed in Hyde and Marinov (2012) and the World Development Indicators data set. We focus on 70 developing countries over the period 1990–2010. It appears that the political budget cycle is reduced up to the point where it is fully cancelled out at a remittance threshold of 10.7% of GDP. Those findings are robust to different robustness checks.

Most of countries covered by natural forests are developing countries, with limited ability to levy taxes and restrained access to international credit markets. Consequently, they are amenable to draw heavily on two sources of government financing, namely seigniorage and deforestation revenues. First, we develop a theoretical model emphasizing a substitution effect between seigniorage and deforestation revenues. Second, a panel-data econometric analysis over the 1990–2010 period confirms our findings. Consequently, a tighter monetary policy hastens deforestation. Third, we extend the theoretical model and show that international transfers dedicated to forest protection can upturn the positive link between tighter monetary policies and deforestation, and then discuss the relevance of this finding with respect to recent institutional arrangements.

This article shows that the level and the predictability of remittances reduce working poverty in receiving economies through their effects on labour market dynamics. It takes advantage of the new cross-country dataset (ILO, KILM 7th edition) containing information on the share of individuals working for less than US$2 per day. To identify the main impacts, the article proposes a novel approach to deal with the endogeneity of remittances and migration. In addition, the results are robust to the possible error in measuring working poverty, to the potential attrition bias, and to the presence of various control variables. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Un moment crucial dans l’analyse des effets de la politique budgétaire a été la publication de Barro (1974) formalisant l’équivalence néoricardienne selon laquelle les agents en ajustant leur comportement à la politique budgétaire la rendent neutre.

Only several years after Euro banknotes and coins were put into circulation, the 1 Eurozone was struck by the global financial and economic crisis. Originated from the US, the crisis progressively gained in intensity when reaching the Eurozone, nourished by a wide variety of factors such as major fiscal worsening caused by extreme increases in public spending (for example, wages and pensions, as in Greece or Portugal), property bubbles weakening the financial sector (Spain), loss of confidence due to false public statements on the condition of fiscal accounts (Greece) generating skyjumping spreads and snow-ball effects on debt dynamics, etc. In a context of financial contagion, these imbalances coagulated into a Eurozone crisis, of such a magnitude to the point of being a major threatening for the perenity of the Eurozone itself. At a global level, the economic importance of the Eurozone and the negative spillovers to integrated markets arising from its potential disappearance urged major institutions, including the IMF, the World Bank, the EIB or the EBRD, to join effort with EU- (such as the European Financial Stability Mechanism) or Eurozone-based (such as the European Financial Stability Facility) mechanisms in providing massive bailout for many Eurozone countries. At a national level, the crisis was associated to changes in the political colour of governments in many Eurozone countries (for example, Greece, Italy, Portugal or Spain). But more importantly, many governments adopted national-level massive fiscal stimuli, in addition to European-level fiscal stimuli, such as the European Economic Recovery Plan, estimated to around 2 % of the EU GDP cumulated for the 2009- 2010 period. However, since 2011, given the deterioration of their public finances, many European countries adopted large fiscal consolidation plans.

This paper explores the role of remittances and foreign aid inflows during food price shocks. The results yield four findings. First, low income countries and the Sub-Saharan African region are the most vulnerable to food price shocks. Second, remittance and aid inflows dampen the effect of positive food price shock and food price instability on household consumption in vulnerable countries. Third, negative food price shock episodes are associated with a significant increase in household consumption in vulnerable countries. Fourth, a lower remittance-to-GDP ratio is required in order to fully absorb the effects of food price shocks.

This article examines whether or not remittance inflows help mitigate the effects of natural disasters on the volatility of the real output per capita growth rate. Using a large sample of developing countries and mobilizing a dynamic panel data framework, it uncovers a diminishing macroeconomic destabilizing consequence of natural disasters as remittance inflows rise. It appears that the effect of natural disasters disappears for a remittance ratio above 8% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). However, remittances aggravate the destabilizing effects of natural disasters when they exceed 17% of the GDP. Finally, the article shows that current and lagged remittance inflows significantly reduce the number of people killed by natural disasters and the number of people affected, respectively.

This paper analyzes the impact of remittances on household consumption instability in a large panel of developing countries. There are four main results. First, remittances significantly reduce household consumption instability. Second, remittances play an insurance role by dampening the effects of various sources of consumption instability in developing countries (natural disasters, agricultural shocks, discretionary fiscal policy, systemic financial and banking crises and exchange rate instability). Third, the stabilizing role played by remittances is stronger in less financially developed countries. Fourth, the overall stabilizing effect of remittances is mitigated when remittances exceed 6% of GDP.

En novembre 2008, alors que l'envolée des prix sur les marchés de matières premières, et notamment de produits alimentaires, continuait de susciter l'inquiétude, s'est tenu au CERDI un colloque sur le thème « Intégration des marchés et sécurité alimentaire dans les pays en développement ». La crise récente des matières premières met en lumière, à la fois, la vulnérabilité des ménages dépendants du marché dont l'accès à l'alimentation se trouve menacé et les difficultés, voire l'incapacité de certains producteurs, à profiter des nouvelles opportunités du marché. Elle amène ainsi à s'interroger à nouveau sur les mécanismes de transmission des signaux de prix et l'intensité des échanges commerciaux entre marchés au sein d'un espace national, régional et/ou international.

This paper focuses on the impact of property rights insecurity on deforestation in the Brazilian Legal Amazon. Deforestation is considered as a risk management strategy: property rights insecurity reduces the present value of forests and fosters forest conversion into agricultural and pasture lands. Moreover, deforestation is the consequence of strategic interactions between landowners and squatters. Landowners clear the forest preventively in order to assert the productive use of land and to reduce the expropriation risk. Squatters invade land plots, clear the forest and may afterwards gain official recognition with formal property titles. A particular attention is paid to the measure of land property rights insecurity in the Brazilian context. It is assumed that property rights insecurity has a multidimensional character taken into account by the number of homicides related to land conflicts and expropriation procedures. Principal component analysis allows synthesising such information. An econometric model of deforestation is estimated on a panel dataset on the 1988–2000 period and the nine states of the Brazilian Legal Amazon. The hypothesis that insecure land property rights contribute to higher rates of deforestation is not rejected when the simultaneity bias between insecure property rights and deforestation is addressed. This result questions the modality of the Brazilian land reform that considers forested areas as unproductive and thus open for expropriation procedures.

Climate change mitigation would benefit from Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) in developing countries. The REDD mechanism, still in discussion, would be in charge of distilling the right incentives and promoting the right policies for fostering forest conservation. The estimation of reduced emissions induced by the mechanism has been raised as an issue, either for issuing the proper amount of carbon credits or for providing appropriate compensations of foregone revenues and other costs to host countries. This estimation would be based on the gap between observed deforestation and a counterfactual value. Although any prediction of deforestation rates (i.e. business-asusual scenarios) is challenging, and any negotiated target is subject to obvious political influence, these two ways have been prioritirized so far to determine the counterfactual value. In other words proposals focused on a results-based approach, the relevance of which is questionable because estimations of avoided deforestation are hardly reliable. With this approach, issuance of carbon credits and distribution of financial compensations could threaten respectively environmental integrity of the scheme and equity outcomes. Rather than considering overall deforestation (predicted and observed), we argue that a REDD mechanism would gain from linking distribution of carbon finance to real efforts (opposed to “results”) that developing countries implement for slowing deforestation rates. This would provide strong incentives to design and enforce suitable policies and measures. The methodology we present to measure these efforts (labeled Compensated Successful Efforts) is based on the rationale that overall deforestation is partly due to structural factors, and to domestic policies and measures. This typology differs from others presented in the literature such as proximate/underlying causes, or economic/institutional factors. Using an econometric model, our approach estimates efforts that are (i) independent of structural factors (economic development, population, initial forest area, agricultural export prices), (ii) estimated ex post at the end of the crediting period, and (iii) relative to other countries. In order to illustrate the methodology we apply the model to a panel of 48 countries (Asia, Latin America, Africa) and four periods between 1970 and 2005. We conclude on the feasibility to estimate avoided deforestation using the Compensated Successful Efforts approach.

L'objet de cet article est d'analyser l'effet de la corruption sur la mobilisation des recettes publiques. Une analyse économétrique sur données de panel (125 pays et couvrant la période 1980-2002) permet de ne pas rejeter l'hypothèse d'un effet négatif de la corruption sur les recettes publiques. Cet effet négatif de la corruption n'affecte pas de manière identique les différentes composantes des recettes. En raison probablement des opportunités différentes de rente, la corruption modifie la structure du prélèvement public au profit des recettes tarifaires assises sur le commerce international et au détriment des impôts directs et indirects, dont en particulier la TVA. Il apparaît également qu'un canal de transmission important de la corruption sur le prélèvement public est celui transitant par un affaiblissement du civisme fiscal capté à travers des variables de l'action publique.

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Les pays de l'UEMOA ont adopté, en 1999, un pacte de convergence, de stabilité, de croissance et de solidarité. Le but premier du pacte est d'imposer des contraintes aux politiques budgétaires nationales de manière à prévenir les déséquilibres macro-économiques et préserver la crédibilité de la monnaie commune. Si les efforts budgétaires peuvent entraîner une récession par la mise en jeu des multiplicateurs keynésiens, des effets de seuil peuvent également exister dans la relation entre la politique budgétaire et l'activité. L'objectif de cet article est de tester un modèle dans lequel les effets de la politique budgétaire sont conditionnels au taux d'endettement public externe. En appliquant la logique de modélisation des seuils endogènes, initialement développée par Hansen (1999), il apparaît qu'en moyenne les États africains ont exercé une influence de type keynésien sur le produit intérieur lorsque le taux d'endettement est inférieur à 83 %.

This paper analyses the effects of trade openness on budget balances by distinguishing the effects of natural openness from those of trade policy. Revealed indicators of natural openness and trade policy are computed. Using GMM-system estimator, the econometric analysis focuses on 66 developing countries over 1974-1998. The results show that trade openness increases a country's exposure to external shocks. This enforces the negative impact on budget balances of terms of trade instability. Additionally, trade openness influences budget balances through several other channels

We examine the consequences of land tenure insecurity on economic growth in Brazil. We use an overlapping generations model with two sectors: an agricultural sector and a manufacturing sector. Land is specific to the agricultural sector and capital goods are specific to the manufacturing sector. Moreover land is a fixed production factor. Saving takes the form of either land or capital goods purchases, and saving composition depends on transaction costs generated by land tenure insecurity. It is shown that land tenure insecurity implies a decrease in land prices and a reallocation of savings in favour of capital goods. Two econometric restrictions can be tested on a panel of the Brazilian federation states: land tenure insecurity has a negative impact on land prices and a positive one on economic growth. Land tenure insecurity is proxied by the number of squatters. These two restrictions are not rejected.

Dans cet article, nous examinons les conséquences de l'insécurité foncière sur la croissance économique au Brésil à partir d'un modèle dynamique d'une économie comportant un secteur agricole et un secteur manufacturier. La terre est à la fois un facteur de production fixe et spécifique au secteur agricole et un support d'épargne alternatif au capital employé dans le secteur manufacturier. L'arbitrage entre la détention de capital ou de terre dépend de coûts de transaction spécifiques à l'actif foncier, qui résultent de l'insécurité foncière. L'insécurité foncière entraîne une baisse du prix de la terre et une modification de la composition de l'épargne favorable au capital. Le modèle permet donc d'établir deux restrictions : un effet négatif de l'insécurité foncière sur le prix de la terre et un effet positif sur la croissance. Ces deux restrictions sont testées sur des données de panel pour les 27 états de la fédération brésilienne. L'insécurité foncière est approchée par le nombre de squatters. Les résultats économétriques n'invalident pas le modèle.

The aim of this paper is to analyse the relationship between the land market failures and the economic growth in Brazil. We use an overlapping model including two sectors, agricultural and industrial. The land is both a specific factor for agriculture and an asset that can be substituted to the capital used in the industry. The trade-off between land and capital holding depends, among other factors, on the transaction costs on the land market. These costs result from land insecurity and generate a decrease in the land price that favours capital accumulation. Two restrictions follow from our model : land insecurity has a negative effect on land price, and a positive effect on economic growth. These two restrictions are tested on panel data for the 27 Brazilian states. The econometric results do not reject our hypothesis.

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Most developing economies borrow abroad in foreign currency, which exposes them to the problem of "original sin." Although the literature on the issue is relatively extensive, little is said about the role of fiscal frameworks such as fiscal rules in controlling original sin. Hence, using a panel of 59 developing countries over the period 1990-2020 and applying the entropy balancing method, we find that fiscal rules reduce government debt in foreign currency, and that the effects are statistically and economically significant and robust. In addition, the strengthening of the rule, better fiscal discipline prior to the adoption of the reform, financial development, financial openness, flexibility of the exchange rate regime, and sound institutions amplify the negative effect of fiscal rules on original sin.

This paper examines the impact of mobile money adoption on entrepreneurship in a large panel of 105 developing countries over the period 2006-2020 using entropy balancing method. Results indicate that countries with mobile money have higher entrepreneurial activities. Specifically, countries with mobile money experienced an increase of 0.35 percentage points in their entrepreneurial activity compared to nonmobile money countries. This result is robust to several robustness tests, including altering the definition of mobile money, the definition of entrepreneurship, placebo tests, adding additional control variables, changing the sample design, and alternative estimation methods such as panel fixed effects, and the GMM system. Furthermore, the heterogeneity tests performed indicate the sensitivity of our results to the intensity of mobile money use, some structural factors such as democracy, conflict, regulatory quality, corruption, financial development, internet, and education.

African countries are natural resource-rich. The continent has natural forests, homes of endemic biodiversity and various ores. This richness brings hope for sustainable and inclusive development in a continent whose population is rapidly growing. It also raises fears of environmental degradation. This article studies mining-driven deforestation using unique finescale data from 2001 to 2019. The dataset covering all Sub-Saharan African countries entails 2,207 polygons with an average size of about 12,000 square kilometres. 926 polygons were forested in 2001, of which 198 hosted industrial mines. A spatial autoregressive model allows taking dependence between deforestation decisions at the polygon level. The econometric results show that an additional mine increases deforestation by about 155 square kilometres. Protected areas mitigate deforestation poorly. One hundred square kilometres under protected areas enable only a 9.7 square kilometres reduction in forest loss. More than doubling protected areas would be necessary to offset mining-driven forest loss. Protected areas cannot alone mitigate the adverse effects of mining on forest loss and other environmental consequences. Moreover, the effectiveness of protected areas is not uniform across space: it vanishes in highly conflicted regions.

The paper aims to highlight the impact of youth resentment on violent conflicts in Burkina Faso. This work takes advantage of one of the latest nationwide UNICEF-sponsored surveys conducted in Burkina Faso before some parts of the country became inaccessible because of attacks. Among other information, this survey collected data on youth resentment towards the ability of their household to fulfill their needs. This resentment is closely related to perceived relative deprivation. We merge this survey into an original dataset that gathers data from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), mining data from the MINEX project, and distances data computed using Burkina Faso’s roads information. The results of an event count model show that youth resentment explains the occurrence of conflicts. Moreover, the presence of mining companies, the remoteness from infrastructures, ethnic diversity, and polarization also significantly affect violence against civilians.

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In the process of EU integration, toward the EA accession, we try to understand, how changes in exchange rate regime, attributed to the switch through the ERM-II and to the EA accession, influence the dynamic between inflation and unemployment, i.e., shock on the Phillips curve coefficient. We look at a panel of countries, in the CEECs over the last twenty years, using a recent work from McLeay and Tenreyro (2020), to clarify the impact of loosing the monetary autonomy. Being under a pegged regime is not associated with a flattened Phillips curve. However, after the EA accession, the Phillips curve coefficient becomes not significant. This result is confirmed, looking at other small EA countries; while "economic leaders" tend to maintain a significant trade-off between inflation and unemployment. Using recent work from

We empirically explore how elections impact climate change policy and environmental degradation, using a sample of 76 democratic countries over the period 1990‐2014. Three key results emerge from our system‐GMM estimations. First, election years are characterized by an increase in C02 emissions, even though the effect weakens over the recent years. Second, this effect is present only in established democracies, where incumbents engage in fiscal manipulation through the composition of public spending rather than its level. Third, higher freedom of the press and high environmental preferences from citizens reduce the size of this trade‐off between pork barrel spending and the public good, namely environment quality.

The objective of the paper is to study the relationship between international trade openness and domestic market integration in Late Imperial China. More specifically, we focus on a natural experiment namely the Unequal Treaties of the second half of the nineteenth century that lifted the long-existing international trade restriction system. The integration of domestic markets is analyzed while looking at the existence of a long term common movement in the grain prices between provinces. The econometric results show that trade openness did not lead to better integration of the Chinese domestic grain markets. Our results support the hypothesis according to which long-distance trade has not generated efficiency gains in domestic markets. We evidence a strong segmentation between domestic and international grain markets owing to different traded products and operators.

L'accès aux capitaux sur les marchés financiers internationaux est nécessaire pour les pays en développement. Toutefois, suite aux crises des dettes souveraines, les investisseurs ont exigé des rendements plus élevés pour la détention des obligations. Ces comportements peuvent s’interpréter comme la recherche d’une prime de risque. Il est vrai qu’une vaste littérature analyse les déterminants du coût des emprunts souverains. Cependant, les contributions se focalisant sur les effets de la politique budgétaire sont plutôt rares. L'objectif de cet article est d'étudier plus particulièrement les effets de la structure des dépenses publiques sur les écarts de taux d’intérêt pour l’emprunteur souverain.

Despite a large literature linking fiscal policy and income inequality (IQ), the relationship between fiscal rules (FR) and IQ is severely underexplored. In a large panel of developing countries, propensity score matching estimations reveal that countries that adopted FR experience a significant decrease in their IQ with respect to countries that did not. Economically meaningful, this favorable effect is robust to a wide set of alternative measurement, methodology, and modeling specifications. Moreover, we unveil significant differences among FR: balanced budget and debt rules robustly decrease IQ, contrary to expenditure rules that increase it. Finally, the effect of FR on IQ is subject to heterogeneity related to structural factors. Given the current global IQ trends, our results showing that the FR are not neutral for IQ may provide insightful evidence for governments of countries aiming at adopting FR.

This paper assesses the impact of remittances and climate variability on the food security of households in Burkina Faso. It draws from the World Bank 2010 survey on migration and remittances in Burkina Faso and uses a database from Burkina Faso’s Department of Meteorology regarding rainfall recorded in the ten weather stations throughout the country between 2001 and 2010. We build a food security index using principal component analysis that encompasses the accessibility and utilization dimensions of the concept. We also compute an inter-annual rainfall index and the latter is found to have a negative impact on food security. After controlling for potential endogeneity issues using distance variables and migrant characteristics as instruments, remittances are found to enhance food security. Results are robust to alternative measures of food security and alternative calculations of rainfall variability. The paper also highlights that remittances dampen the negative effect of rainfall variability on food security.

The article explores the relationship between public debt and environmental debt. The latter is defined as the difference between the "virgin state" which is the maximum stock of environmental quality that can be kept intact with natural regenerations and the current quality of the environment. A theoretical model of endogenous growth is built. We show that there is a unique well-determined balanced-growth path. The public debt and the environmental debt are substitute in the short-run but complementary in the long-run. Indeed, budget deficit provides additional resources to finance pollution abatement spending, but generate also unproductive expenditures (the debt burden). This hypothesis is tested on a sample of 22 countries for the period 1990-2011. The environmental debt is measured by the cumulative CO2 emissions per capita. We use panel time-series estimators which allow for heterogeneity in the slope coefficients between countries. It appears mainly that, in the long term, an increase of 100% in public debt ratio leads to an increase of 74% in cumulative CO2 per capita. In addition, this positive long-run relationship is still present at the country and the sub-sample level, despite some differences in the short-term dynamics.

Studies addressing the effectiveness of policies aiming at combatting deforestation have produced mixed results, showing no obvious and undebated correlations between a certain type of forest policy instrument and its success in preventing or deterring deforestation. Hence, why anti-deforestation policies succeed or not still remains unclear. This paper proposes a new reading grid of the effectiveness of anti-deforestation policies, by mapping the causal mechanisms at stake from its design to its objective of avoiding deforestation. 264 empirical evaluations are collected and reviewed in order to reveal the theory of change (ToC) that emerges from the current practice of forest policy evaluation. This mapping sheds light on the different causal steps necessary for anti-deforestation policies to be effective, and on the conditions at stake at the various stages of the causal chain, according to the existing literature. Doing so, it allows visualising the reasons for the success of anti-deforestation policies -or lack of, as per the literature corpus analysed. It also provides guidelines with regard to the elements of context to look at when designing and implementing such anti-deforestation policies. Finally, it exposes what is most researched by evaluators, as well as observes the main apparent evaluation blind spots. Our results highlight that the effectiveness of anti-deforestation policies is context-specific on political, economic, social, cultural, environmental and structural dimensions: The political willingness, the nature of available funding, the governance structure, the existence of forest-related traditions, the social and economic situation of local populations, and the nature and spatial scale of the deforestation drivers are elements that influence the success of the policy. They may play this role at different stages of the policy design and implementation: at decision-making stage, during its implementation, or when evaluating its results and outcomes. The majority of conditions reported from the literature concern the implementation phase, at the local level. In other words, according to evaluators, the success or failure of anti-deforestation policies mostly lies in its effective implementation in the field, i.e. in its ability to generate a social acceptance of and compliance to the policy rules. However, some studies also show that a successfully implemented policy does not avoid deforestation if the actual deforestation driver is not properly addressed, thus resulting in deforestation being displaced or unchanged. This underlines the importance of prior risk assessments and field studies to design an adapted policy instrument to combat deforestation.

This paper analyses the determinants of the optimal size of protected areas and what conducts neighboring effects. We investigate in which measure the infrastructure effect and the scarcity effect matter. We obtain several results. The size of protected area mainly depends on preferences toward forest, on the firms’ production costs and on the relation between municipalities. As far as total deforestation is concerned asymmetric regulation is better than no regulation. The infrastructure effect always leads to smaller protected areas than the scarcity effect. Under the infrastructure effect, centralized decisions do not always work in favor of larger protected areas than decentralized decisions contrary to the scarcity effect. We also show that decentralized decisions can reach the first best under the infrastructure effect without public intervention. A study of protected areas in the Brazilian Legal Amazônia corroborates our theoretical results.

In response to increasing debt paths, governments often implement fiscal consolidation programs. This paper studies the impact of these programs on the composition of government spending. System-GMM estimations performed on a sample of 53 developed and emerging countries over 1980-2011 reveal that fiscal consolidations significantly reduce the government investment-to-consumption ratio, i.e. a composition effect. Robust to a wide set of tests, this significantly stronger contraction of government investment with respect to government consumption is at work particularly when debt is high, for spending-based fiscal consolidations, in the low phase of the economic cycle, and following debt and stock market crises. Therefore, in such contexts, fiscal consolidations aimed at short-run stabilization may hurt the economy in the long-run through their detrimental effect on public investment, calling for a reflection upon how they could be re-designed to allow avoiding such undesirable consequences.

This paper evaluates the effects of public expenditures on sovereign bond spreads in emerging market countries. Specifically, the paper explores empirically how country risk, as proxied by sovereign bond spreads, is influenced by the different types of government expenditures (namely current spending, public investments, spending on education, health, social protection, economic affairs and defense) and country-specific fundamentals. Using panel data from emerging market countries, we find that governments can improve their borrowing conditions in international financial markets by heightening public investment and managing their current spending. In accordance with the empirical literature on the determinants of spreads, we find that country-specific fundamentals are also important determinants of spreads. Further, we find evidence that financial markets’ reaction to public expenditures depends on government effectiveness.

Using propensity score matching, this paper assesses the effects of tackling illicit financial flows (IFFs) on domestic tax revenue mobilization in developing countries. It uses data on countries’ compliance with Financial Action Task Force (FATF) Recommendations as treatment variable and involves 67 developing countries around the world. We find that countries which comply with FATF Recommendations (Cooperatives countries) record higher values of domestic tax revenue in comparison with those which do not comply with those Recommendations (Non-cooperatives countries). Otherwise, Cooperatives countries outperform Non-cooperatives countries in terms of domestic tax revenue mobilization. More interestingly, the extent of this adverse impact depends on tax structure: goods and services taxes are more affected, followed by VAT and excise taxes. Our results suggest that developing countries could mobilize more domestic tax revenue by implementing policies to curtail IFFs. Moreover, they should establish sound institutions.

The “Great Trade Collapse” triggered by the 2008-09 crisis calls for a careful assessment of the trade costs of financial crises. Compared with the existing literature that mainly focuses on the total trade of goods and, in the context of the recent great recession, on manufacturing trade, we adopt a more detailed perspective by looking at the response of different types of trade (i.e. agricultural, mining, and manufactured goods, and services) following various types of financial crises (i.e. debt, banking, currency, and inflation crises). Estimations performed on the 1980-2014 period using a combination of impact assessment and local projections to capture a causal dynamic effect running from financial crises to the trade activity unveil the complex panorama of the trade costs of financial crises. Through illustrating the contribution of three sources that drive these complex effects, namely the type of financial crisis, the considered type of goods or services, and countries’ key structural characteristics, our analysis contributes to the general understanding of the trade effects of financial crises, and may provide insightful support for the design and implementation of policies aimed at coping with these effects.

This paper assesses the impact of capital inflows and their composition on the real exchange rate and economic growth in developing countries. Capital inflows can directly support economic growth by relaxing constraints on domestic resources, but can also indirectly weaken growth through the appreciation of the real exchange rate. We employ the Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) for dynamic panel data to deal with the endogeneity bias. Using a large sample of 77 low- and middle-income countries over the period 1980-2012, the results clearly show that capital inflows affect directly and indirectly economic growth. Our main findings are as follows: (i) a 1 percent increase in total net capital inflows appreciates the real exchange rate by 0.5 percent; (ii) the real exchange rate appreciation effect of remittances is twice as big as the effect of aid, and ten times bigger than the effect of FDI; (iii) overall, capital inflows are associated with higher economic growth after netting out the negative impact of real exchange rate appreciation. Doubling capital inflows per capita would increase growth by about 50 percent, resulting in a gain of roughly 2 additional percentage points on top of the 3.7 percent annual growth rate observed within the sample over the period 1980-2012.

Despite high economic growth in the last decades, many developing countries remain into poverty, income inequality and unemployment of young people, which have led some countries to adopt inclusive growth strategies. In this paper, we show how inclusive growth can boost tax revenue mobilization in developing countries. Effective public policies, improving social cohesion are fundamental to meet citizens’ aspirations and therefore incite them to comply with taxes. To this end, this study uses GMM techniques to deal with endogeneity issue and spans 55 developing countries over the period of 1995-2010. We find that inclusive growth has positive effect on tax revenue mobilization. This finding is robust to various aspects of inclusive growth measurements and additional controls.

Using a remotely sensed pixel data set, we develop a multilevel model and propensity score weighting with multilevel data to assess the impact of protected areas on deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon. These techniques allow taking into account location bias, contextual bias and the dependence of spatial units. The results suggest that protected areas have slowed down deforestation between 2005 and 2009, whatever the type of governance. The results also evidence that protected and unprotected areas do not share the same location characteristics. In addition, the effectiveness of protected areas differs according to socioeconomic and environmental variables measured at municipal level.

This paper examines the cyclicality of provincial expenditure in China during the period 1978-2013. We assess whether provincial expenditure has been pro-cyclical using panel data for our analysis. Profligacy is found to be a regular feature of provincial fiscal policy. This profligacy occurs both in good and bad times and has markedly increased since 1994 with the increased autonomy of provinces. We further find that the profligacy bias is mitigated when financial constraints are relaxed, the remaining political life of the governor is long, government efficiency is strong, corruption incidence is low, and governments are large.

Most of countries covered by natural forests are developing countries, with limited ability to levy taxes and restrained access to international credit markets; consequently, they are amenable to draw heavily on two sources of government financing, namely seigniorage and deforestation revenues. First, we develop a theoretical model emphasizing a substitution effect between seigniorage and deforestation revenues. Second, a panel-data econometric analysis over the 1990-2010 period confirms our findings. Consequently, a tighter monetary policy hastens deforestation. Third, we extend the theoretical model and show that international transfers dedicated to forest protection can upturn the positive link between tighter monetary policies and deforestation, and then discuss the relevance of this finding with respect to recent institutional arrangements.

We revisit the link between crises and exchange rate regimes (ERR). Using a panel of 90 developed and developing countries over the period 1980-2009, we find that corner ERR are not more prone to crises compared to intermediate ERR. This finding holds for different types of crises (banking, currency and debt), and is robust to a wide set of alternative specifications. Consequently, we clearly break down the traditional bipolar view: countries that aim at preventing crisis episodes should focus less on the choice of the ERR, and instead implement sound structural macroeconomic policies.

In this paper we empirically discuss whether or not external debt affects country’s governance. Indeed, indebted countries need some political governance reforms in order to send out a positive signal to international financial community and investors; and so improving business climate. However, external debt reduces their flexibility and ability to address associated costs to political governance. Our study focuses on the period 1985-2011 and spans 103 developing countries. To deal with endogeneity issue, we first lag external debt by one year and second propose two-step tobit estimator by instrumenting external debt-to-GDP ratio with real effective exchange rate. Even controlling for various conventional determinants of democratic transitions, we find that external debt constraints indebted countries to move up democracy scale but incite governments to improve investment profile and therefore improving business climate. Furthermore, Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative and International Monetary Fund (IMF) programs dampen the negative effect of debt on democratic transitions.

Protected areas are increasingly used as a tool to fight against deforestation. This paper presents new evidence on the spillover effects that occur in the decision to deforest and the creation of protected areas in local administrative entities in Brazilian Legal Amazon over the 2001-2011 period. We also highlight the interdependence between these two decisions. We proceed in two steps. First, we assumed that protected areas are created to stop the negative effects of deforestation on biodiversity. In order to control for the non-random location of protected areas, biodiversity indicators are used as excluded instruments. This model is estimated using a spatial model with instrumental variables. Second, a simultaneous system of spatially interrelated cross sectional equations is used to take into account the interdependence between the decision to deforest and the creation of protected areas. Our results show (i) that deforestation activities of neighboring municipalities are complements and that (ii) there is evidence of leakage in the sense that protected areas may shift deforestation to neighboring municipalities. The net effect of protected areas on deforestation remains however negative; it is moreover stable across two sub-periods. Our results confirm the important role of protected areas to curb deforestation and thereby biodiversity erosion. Moreover, they show that strategic interactions deserve attention in the effectiveness of conservation policies.

Based on a sample of 38 emerging countries, we find that inflation targeting (IT) adoption improves sovereign debt risk. However, we show that IT adoption effectiveness is sensitive to several structural characteristics, such as the phase of the business cycle, the fiscal stance, and the level of development. In addition, the measure of the risk, namely ratings (rating agencies) or bond yield spreads (markets), as well as the form of IT (full-fledged or partial) is equally crucial for the effects of IT adoption on sovereign debt risk. Thus, our paper provides valuable insights for IT implementation as a device for improving emerging market economies’ access to international financial markets for financing long-term investment projects and supporting potential economic growth.

This paper examines the so-popular anecdote according to which pro-cyclical fiscal policies are due to pro-cyclical behavior of financing. We address the question of whether or not pro-cyclical aid leads to pro-cyclical fiscal policies in SSA recipient countries. We employed panel data techniques covering 39 SSA countries over the period 1985- 2012. We found that results depend on the type of aid: pro-cyclical bilateral aid is negatively associated to pro-cyclical fiscal policy, while pro-cyclical ODA from multilateral agencies leads to more pro-cyclical fiscal policy. This finding is robust to potential error bias, alternative specifications, additional controls and different estimation methods.

This paper aims at assessing the determinants of Amazon deforestation, with an emphasis on the role played by off-farm income. We first present a microeconomic model which relates off-farm income to deforestation patterns. We then test the empirical implications by using data on the 2006 Brazilian Agricultural Census. Our results suggest that an increase in off-farm income tends to reduce deforestation. This may be explained by the fact that greater off-farm opportunities tends to increase the opportunity cost of farm labor. Results also show that smallholders are less responsive to the increase in the returns of off-farm activities than large ones, which is in line with our hypothesis of labor market imperfections regarding off-farm activities.

Improving access to capital through credit and public spendings is an important step toward development and poverty alleviation. At the same time, deforestation-related activities, like agricultural expansion, can be seen as relying on natural capital, through the depletion of forest resources and the use of land in an extensive way. It is then important to better understand how a better access to capital influences the use of land as a natural capital. This paper assesses the relationship between financial development, public spendings and deforestation. Are they substitute or complement? Our econometric analysis shows that deforestation is positively correlated to access to credit and public spendings, which gives some evidence that natural capital is a complement to credit and public spendings.

This paper contributes to the controversial literature on the relationship between environmental policies and international trade. It provides new evidence about the effect of a gap in environmental policies between trading partners on trade flow on a sample of developed and developing countries over the 1980-2010 period. The paper innovates on two aspects. First, while previous studies have used partial measures of environmental regulations (input-oriented or output-oriented indicators), an index of a country's environmental policy is computed. This index is calculated as the difference between observed pollution levels and "structural" pollution i.e. pollution predicted by determinants of environmental degradation as identified and modelled in the literature. This index is therefore a measure of "revealed" efforts made by countries aiming at downsizing environmental degradation. Second, the effect of these revealed environmental policies is assessed on bilateral trade flows in a gravity model. A particular attention is paid to similarities in environmental policies. Our results show that a gap in domestic efforts towards environmental protection between trading partners has no effect on exports. Moreover, the results do not appear to be conditional on the level of development of the countries trading nor on the characteristics of exported goods (manufactured goods and primary commodities).

This paper focuses on the relationships between remittances, elections, and government consumption as a percentage of GDP. We combine data from the National Elections across Democracy and Autocracy (NELDA) dataset compiled and discussed in Hyde and Marinov (2012) and the World Development Indicators dataset. We focus on 70 young democracies in the developing world. The period under investigation is 1990-2010. The main objective of the paper is to assess whether remittances have an influence on the political manipulation, which may occur prior to an election, through in increase in the government consumption-to-GDP-ratio. It appears that remittances dampen the political business cycle (PBC). Furthermore, the PBC is reduced up to the point where it is fully cancelled out at a remittance threshold of 10.7 percent of GDP. Those findings are robust to different econometric strategies and robustness checks.

This paper analyzes the effects of Inflation Targeting (IT) and Fiscal Rules (FR) on fiscal behaviors and inflation dynamics. Its main novelty is twofold: first, it is the first study which accounts explicitly for the role of the interactions between IT and FR regarding their fiscal and inflationary effects. Second, it questions the optimality of the sequence of adoption of IT and FR. Using a wide panel of 152 developed and developing countries over the period 1990-2009, we find that adopting both IT and FR leads to better fiscal and monetary outcomes than adopting only FR or only IT. In addition, we highlight the dominance of the sequence which consists of introducing first FR before adopting IT with respect to the opposite sequence, regarding their fiscal and inflationary effects.

This article examines the influence of Policy Mix coherence in Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). The paper innovates in two ways. First, through an interaction between the monetary conditions index and the primary structural fiscal balance, we highlight coherence-type complementarities between monetary policy and fiscal policy with regard to their effects on economic activity. Second, we show that the influence of the coherence of policy mix on the effect of monetary policy is different according to the stance of the economy within the four possible regimes of policy mix, mostly in the WAEMU subsample, where integration is deeper than in the non-WAEMU countries, thanks to the common currency (the Franc CFA) they share. The analysis is based upon a panel dataset from 1990 to 2006 and remains robust to alternative specifications used to calculate the monetary conditions index. Our results contribute to the debate regarding the prospect of an ECOWAS-wide common currency. Indeed, given the heterogeneity in the economic structure of its members States, more policy mix coherence seems necessary to avoid unexpected impacts of monetary policy on economic activity.

This paper measures the effects of food price shocks on both the level of household consumption per capita and the instability of the household consumption per capita growth rate in developing countries. In this vein, the paper explores the role of aid and remittance inflows in the mitigation of the effects of food price shocks in the recipient economies. Using a large sample of developing countries observed over the period 1980-2009 and mobilising dynamic panel data specifications, the econometric results yield three important findings. First, food price shocks significantly affect both the level and the instability of household consumption in highly vulnerable countries. Second, remittance and aid inflows significantly dampen the effect of food price shocks in the most vulnerable countries. Third, a lower remittance-to-GDP ratio is required in order to fully absorb the effects of food price shocks compared to the corresponding aid-to-GDP ratio.

This paper focuses on the relationships between remittances and the share of individuals working for less than 2$ US per day. It is based on an original panel dataset containing information related to remittances in about 80 developing countries and to the number of workers being paid less than 2 dollars per day as well. Even after factoring in the endogeneity of remittance inflows the results suggest that remittances lead to a decrease in the prevalence of working poor in receiving economies. This effect is stronger in a context of high macroeconomic volatility but is mitigated by the unpredictability of remittances: remittances are more effective to decreasing the share of working poor when they are easily predictable. Moreover, domestic finance and remittances appear as substitutes: remittances are less efficient in reducing the prevalence of working poor whenever finance is available.

This paper focuses on the relationships between remittances and the share of individuals working for less than 2$ US per day. It is based on an original panel dataset containing information related to remittances in about 80 developing countries and to the number of workers being paid less than 2 dollars per day as well. Even after factoring in the endogeneity of remittance inflows the results suggest that remittances lead to a decrease in the prevalence of working poor in receiving economies. This effect is stronger in a contex of high macroeconomic volatility but is mitigated by the unpredictability of remittances : remittances are more effective to decreasing the share of working poor when they are easily predictable. Moreover, domestic finance and remittances appear as substitutes : remittances are less efficient in reducing the prevalence of working poor whenever finance is available.

Cet article traite des difficultés méthodologiques soulevées par l'évaluation du niveau des recettes publiques dans les PED. Pour procéder à cette évaluation, il est tenu compte du niveau effectif des recettes publiques, de leur instabilité et enfin de l'effort fiscal. L'effort fiscal, qui permet d'isoler l'effet de la politique économique sur la mobilisation fiscale, est apprécié comme la différence entre le niveau effectif des recettes publiques et leur niveau structurel déterminé par le niveau de développement, l'ouverture commerciale, le poids de l'agriculture et la part des exportations minières et pétrolières dans les exportations totales. Rapportées au PIB les niveaux moyens de recettes des PED des différents zones géographiques sont similaires et stables sur les 25 dernières années. Cependant, l'Afrique au Sud du Sahara est caractérisée par une instabilité plus marquée et aussi par une politique économique longtemps plus favorable à la mobilisation fiscale que dans les autres zones (effort fiscal positif).

In this paper, we analyze the relationship between corruption and public revenues. An empirical investigation of panel data (125 countries and covering the period 1980-2002) makes it possible not to reject the hypothesis that corruption has a negative effect on public revenues collection. However, the impact is different on the various components of revenue. This is because different rent opportunities are created by corruption which seems to modify public revenues structure in favour of customs tariffs revenues while reducing direct and indirect taxes such as VAT. It also appears that a major channel of corruption is the weakening of the tax morality which in this study is captured by various public service delivery variables.

Climate change mitigation would benefit from Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) in developing countries. The REDD mechanism is in charge of distilling the right incentives for fostering forest conservation with appropriate compensation of foregone revenues, which in turn is related to avoided deforestation (how many hectares of forests are saved). Although any prediction of deforestation rates (i.e. business-as-usual scenarios) is challenging, and any negotiated target is subject to political influence, these two ways have been prioritirized so far. In other words, proposals have focused on a baseline (or cap)-and-trade approach, which relevance is questionable because resulting financial compensations are subject to unfairness if estimations of avoided deforestation are not reliable. Rather than considering overall deforestation (predicted and observed), we argue that a REDD mechanism would gain from linking compensations to real efforts that developing countries implement for slowing deforestation rates. This would provide more efficient incentives to design and enforce suitable policies and measures. The methodology we present to measure these efforts (labeled Compensated Successful Efforts) is based on the rationale that overall deforestation is due partly to structural factors, and partly to domestic policies and measures. This typology differs from others presented in the literature such as proximate / underlying causes, or economic / institutional factors. Using an econometric model, our approach estimates efforts that are (i) independent of structural factors (economic development, population, initial forest area, agricultural export prices), (ii) estimated ex post at the end of the crediting period, and (iii) relative to other countries. In order to illustrate the methodology we apply the model to a panel of 48 countries (Asia, Latin America, Africa) and four periods between 1970 and 2005. We conclude on the feasibility to estimate avoided deforestation using the Compensated Successful Efforts approach. In addition to being conservative from an environmental perspective, this approach guarantees fairness by accounting for dramatic changes during the commitment period.

This paper establishes a link between deforestation and credit cycles in Latin American countries. The latter exhibit rapid deforestation rates as well as macroeconomic instability that is often rooted in credit booms and crunches episodes: data available on the last years show a coincidence between higher macroeconomic instability and deforestation increases. This paper provides a theoretical explanation and econometric investigations of this phenomenon. A key ingredient of the model is the existence of two sectors: a modern agricultural sector and a subsistence one, which are hypothesised to catch the basic features of Latin American agricultural sectors. Agricultural production relies on three production factors: land, capital and labour. Agents clear forested areas in order to increase agricultural lands. Interest rates movements have an effect on agricultural decisions and thus on deforestation since they induce factor movements between the agricultural sectors. It is shown that deforestation occurs in response to interest rates increases or decreases primarily because of the irreversible character of forest conversion. Econometric tests are conducted on the 1948-2005 period on an exhaustive sample of Latin American countries. The database on deforestation is a compilation of FAO censuses and several measures of credit cycles are calculated as well. The main output of the paper is to evidence a link between credit cycles and deforestation. The results are robust to the introduction of usual control variables in deforestation equations.

This paper focuses on the impact of property rights insecurity on deforestation in the Brazilian Legal Amazon. Deforestation is considered as a risk management strategy: property rights insecurity reduces the present value of forests and fosters forest conversion into agricultural and pasture lands. Moreover, deforestation is the consequence of strategic interactions between landowners and squatters. Landowners clear the forest preventively in order to assert the productive use of land and to reduce the expropriation risk. Squatters invade land plots, clear the forest and may afterwards gain official recognition with formal property titles. A particular attention is paid to the measure of land property rights insecurity in the Brazilian context. It is assumed that property rights insecurity has a multidimensional character taken into account by the number of homicides related to land conflicts and expropriation procedures. Principal component analysis allows synthesising such information. An econometric model of deforestation is estimated on a panel dataset on the 1988-2000 period and the nine states of the Brazilian Legal Amazon. The hypothesis that insecure land property rights contribute to higher rates of deforestation is not rejected when the simultaneity bias between insecure property rights and deforestation is addressed. This result questions the modality of the Brazilian land reform that considers forested areas as unproductive and thus open for expropriation procedures.

This paper aims to analyze the impact of official development assistance (ODA) on tax transition in developing countries. First, we build qualitative indicators of tax transition taking into account the level as well as the composition of public revenue. Second, we provide theoretical explanations of how ODA can affect tax transition in an environment characterized by several divergent social interests. Te third step consists in econometrically analyzing the relationship between official development assistance and tax transition. Basing our estimates on a sample consisted of 106 developing countries over the period 1980-2005, we find that official development assistance significantly accelerates the transition and even more sustains it for at least five years. This result is robust to several specifications based on alternative measures of both foreign aid and tax transition.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the detrimental impact of land tenure insecurity on deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon. It is related to recent controversies about the detrimental impact of land laws on deforestation, which seem to legitimize land encroachments. The latter is mainly the result of land tenure insecurity which is a key characteristic of this region and results from a long history of interactions between rural social unrest and land reforms or land laws. A simple model is developed where strategic interactions between farmers lead to excessive deforestation. One of the empirical implications of the model is a positive relationship between land tenure insecurity and the extent of deforestation. The latter is tested on data from a panel of Brazilian Amazon municipalities. The negative effect of land tenure insecurity proxied by the number of squatters on deforestation is not rejected when estimations are controlled for the possible endogeneity of squatters. One of the main policy implications is that ex post legalizations of settlements must be accompanied by the enforcement of environmental obligations.

The forest still covers an important share of land area in many developing countries and represents an important source of revenue for governments. Another major contribution to government revenues comes from printing money, namely the seigniorage. Building on a simple theoretical model where governments target inflation and aim at reducing deforestation while minimising a welfare loss function, we exhibit the potential substitution effect between seigniorage and deforestation revenues. Regressions run on a panel of developing countries show that there exists a non-negligible substitution effect between seigniorage and deforestation revenues, which is, as suggested by the theoretical model, even stronger if the endogenous character of seigniorage is taken into account. Adding variables suggested by the theoretical model as well as usual control variables in deforestation equations, do not alter the main result. As a consequence, disinflation policies as recommended by the IMF, may hasten deforestation. The model is extended to address this problem, which shows that international transfers dedicated to rainforest protection may upturn the positive correlation between tighter monetary policies and deforestation and give some additional support to REDD's advocates.

This paper analyzes the impact of natural disasters on the output growth volatility. Using a large sample of developing countries and mobilizing a dynamic panel data framework, it uncovers a diminishing macroeconomic destabilizing consequence of natural disasters as remittance inflows rise. It appears that the effect of natural disasters disappears for a remittance ratio above 8% of GDP. However, remittances aggravate the destabilizing effects of natural disasters when they exceed 17% of GDP.

This paper analyzes the impact of remittances on household consumption instability in developing countries on a large panel of developing countries. The four main results are the following: Firstly, remittances significantly reduce household consumption instability. Secondly, the insurance role played by remittances is highlighted: remittances dampen the effect of various sources of consumption instability in developing countries (natural disasters, agricultural shocks, discretionary fiscal policy). Thirdly, the insurance role played by remittances is more important in less financially developed countries. Fourthly, the overall stabilizing effect of remittances is mitigated when remittances over GDP exceed 8.5%.

This paper analyzes the impact of capital inflows and the exchange rate regime on the real effective exchange rate. A wide range of developing countries (42 countries) is considered with estimation based on panel cointegration techniques. The results show that both public and private inflows cause the real effective exchange rate to appreciate. Among private inflows, portfolio investment has the biggest effect on appreciation, almost seven times that of foreign direct investment or bank loans, and private inflows have the smallest effect. Using a de facto measure of exchange rate flexibility, we find that a more flexible exchange rate helps to dampen appreciation of the real effective exchange rate caused by capital inflows.

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