01993cas a2200253 a 4500 AALejournalIMF016756 230101c9999 xx r poo 0 0eng d 5.00 USD 9781484322901 1018-5941 BD-DhAAL BD-DhAAL Beetsma, Roel. Fiscal Councils : Rationale and Effectiveness / Roel Beetsma, Xavier Debrun. Washington, D.C. : International Monetary Fund, 2016. 1 online resource (26 pages) IMF Working Papers <strong>Off-Campus Access:</strong> No User ID or Password Required <strong>On-Campus Access:</strong> No User ID or Password Required Electronic access restricted to authorized BRAC University faculty, staff and students The paper discusses the effectiveness of independent fiscal institutions-or fiscal councils-in taming the deficit bias that emerged in the 1970s. After a review of the main theoretical arguments and recent trends about fiscal councils, we develop a stylized model showing how a fiscal council can effectively mitigate the deficit bias even though it has no direct lever on the conduct of fiscal policy. We show that the capacity of the fiscal council to improve the public's understanding of the quality of fiscal policy contributes to better align voters and policymakers' incentives and to tame the deficit bias affecting well-intended governments. After mapping the model's key features into a broad set of criteria likely to contribute to the effectiveness of a fiscal council, we use the 2014 vintage of the IMF dataset on independent fiscal institutions to assess whether existing institutions have been built to work. Mode of access: Internet Debrun, Xavier. IMF Working Papers; Working Paper ; No. 2016/086 Full text available on IMF http://elibrary.imf.org/view/journals/001/2016/086/001.2016.issue-086-en.xml IMF e-Library