851 research outputs found
Fiscal Transparency and Procyclical Fiscal Policy
This paper examines why fiscal policy is procyclical in developing as well as developed countries. We introduce the concept of fiscal transparency into a model of retrospective voting, in which a political agency problem between voters and politicians generates a procyclical bias in government spending. The introduction of fiscal transparency generates two new predictions: 1) the procyclical bias in fiscal policy arises only in good times; and 2) a higher degree of fiscal transparency reduces the bias in good times. We find solid empirical support for both predictions using data on both OECD countries and a broader set of countries.fiscal transparency; fiscal policy; procyclicality; business cycle; political economy
A Simple Correctness Proof of the Direct-Style Transformation
We build on Danvy and Nielsen's first-order program transformation into continuation-passing style (CPS) to present a new correctness proof of the converse transformation, i.e., a one-pass transformation from CPS back to direct style. Previously published proofs were based on, e.g., a one-pass higher-order CPS transformation, and were complicated by having to reason about higher-order functions. In contrast, this work is based on a one-pass CPS transformation that is both compositional and first-order, and therefore the proof simply proceeds by structural induction on syntax
A Selective CPS Transformation
The CPS transformation makes all functions continuation-passing, uniformly. Not all functions, however, need continuations: they only do if their evaluation includes computational effects. In this paper we focus on control operations, in particular ``call with current continuation'' and ``throw''. We characterize this involvement as a control effect and we present a selective CPS transformation that makes functions and expressions continuation-passing if they have a control effect, and that leaves the rest of the program in direct style. We formalize this selective CPS transformation with an operational semantics and a simulation theorem Ă la Plotkin
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