Joanna Siwińska-Gorzelak

The Impact of Fiscal Rules on Fiscal Policy Volatility

In this paper, we study the impact of fiscal rules, in the form of explicit deficit or debt constraints, on fiscal policy volatility. The main motivation behind this research is, on the one hand, a negative and robust correlation of fiscal policy volatility and long run growth documented in several papers and, on the other, the relatively small number of works that discuss possible determinants of the former. We argue that fiscal rules have a significant impact on fiscal policy volatility, but depending on the target of the rule—public debt or fiscal balance—rules will increase or decrease policy volatility. This result is novel, and, to the best of our knowledge, has not been discussed in the literature.

School competition and the quality of education: introducing market incentives into public services

Existing research indicates that introducing school choice and competition into the public education system might improve the quality of schooling. Yet, up to date most empirical work on school choice has concentrated on developed countries and it is far from obvious that the experience of these countries can be of any guidance for transition economies. Our work intends to fill this gap. We concentrate on the case of Poland. We argue that in Poland, school choice and competition tends to improve average education quality and efficiency of public education expenditure.

Public Debt Structure and Dynamics in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Romania

This paper attempts to consider in a systematic way the developments of the public debt in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Romania during the 1990.s. After a brief outline of the public indebtedness of the four countries before 1989, it examines the public debt dynamics after 1990 and tries to capture its main determinants: to what extend the changes in the public debt ratio to GDP were caused by fiscal policy as opposed to other factors, like the difference between the growth rate of the economy and the effective interest rate on debt. The structure of the public debt is shown and main changes are summarised. The paper also tries to assess the implications of the countries. indebtedness to their further fiscal sustainability.

Sovereign External Debt and Private Sector Entry in International Financial Markets

Abstract The aim of this paper is to shed light on the public and private sector interdependencies in the international financial market. Using annual data on sovereign and private sector external indebtedness for 95 emerging and developing countries in the 1970-2012 period it looks at the relationship between the level and structure of public external debt and the likelihood of private sector entry in international bond and loan markets. The private sector entry in the offshore loans and bonds markets is shown to be conditional on the amount of public sector external debt. The relationship is complex but in general the saturation of the financial market with external government liabilities renders the private sector entry into the bonds’ market more difficult.