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In Unexpected Revolutionaries , Manuela Moschella investigates the institutional transformation of central banks from the 1970s to the present. Central banks are typically regarded as conservative, politically neutral institutions that uphold conventional macroeconomic wisdom. Yet in the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis and the 2020 COVID-19 crisis, central banks have upended observer expectations by implementing largely unknown and unconventional monetary policies. Far from abiding by well-established policy playbooks, central banks now engage in practices such as providing liquidity support for a wide range of financial institutions and quantitative easing. They have even stretched the remit of monetary policy into issues such as inequality and climate change. Moschella argues that the political nature of central banks lies at the heart of these transformations. While formally independent, central banks need political support to justify their policies and powers, and to obtain it, they carefully manage their reputation among their audienceselected officials, market actors, and citizens. Challenged by reputational threats brought about by twenty-first-century recessionary and deflationary forces, central banks such as the Federal Reserve System and the European Central Bank strategically deviated from orthodox monetary policies to preempt or manage political backlash and to regain public trust. Central banks thus evolved into a new role only in coordination with fiscal authorities and on the back of public contestation. Eye-opening and insightful, Unexpected Revolutionaries is necessary reading for discussions on the future of the neoliberal macroeconomic regime, the democratic oversight of monetary policymaking, and the role that central banks canor cannotplay in our domestic economies.

This article analyses the revenue capacity at the “centre” of the EU. It first outlines major elements (“segments”) of EU “federal” fiscal capacity, both on the revenue and expenditure side, as well as on- and off-budget. It provides a new typology of taxes in a multi-level setting, based on tax ownership and decision-making on tax bases and/or rates. It then enters the so-called EU budgetary galaxy and (a) analyses how the centre utilises different types of revenue capacity and (b) discusses if the so-called “own resources” have tax features. The article finds that these own resources, to a large extent, de facto constitute taxing power, that the EU significantly uses off-budget borrowing capacity (through the European Investment Bank and the European Commission) and that the EU has a variety of schemes that offer revenue capacity to the centre, through the pooling of resources (transfers, guarantees) by its member states and by third countries. The way in which a large portion of the Next Generation EU resources have been channelled into the EU budget (by means of externally assigned revenue) completes the image of a centre with fiscal capacity, rather than an entity that spends but has no true fiscal powers.

Debt relief and the scaling up of aid to low-income countries should allow for greater fiscal space for expenditure programs to create long-term growth and lower poverty rates. But designing a suitable medium-term fiscal framework that fosters a sustainable delivery of better public services and infrastructure while maintaining a credible commitment to fiscal prudence confronts many challenges. This paper discusses what low-income countries can do to shape fiscal policy frameworks that are ambitious in trying to absorb additional aid while still ensuring longer-term sustainability for government expenditure programs and finances. It suggests what approaches can be used to manage the greater fiscal policy risks associated with a scaled-up aid environment, including coordination with monetary policy. The paper also discusses what institutional changes are needed if donors and countries are to facilitate the implementation of a higher level of aid-financed spending programs.

In this paper, we consider the design of the surveillance, and, in particular, the fiscal criteria in the Central African Economic and Monetary Community (CEMAC) with the view to ensuring they are consistent with internal and external sustainability. This consistency is important within a monetary union because fiscal policy is the primary instrument through which national governments can influence macroeconomic performance. We comment on how surveillance might be improved by broadening the region's current criteria through alternative fiscal indicators, some focus on the scope and nature of external shocks, and attention to the consistency of policies in assuring the viability of the union and its fixed exchange rate regime.

In recent years, the IMF has released a growing number of reports and other documents covering economic and financial developments and trends in member countries.