Governments need to either cut other spending or raise more tax revenue to service the additional debt resulting from shocks like the Covid-19 pandemic. This paper considers the case when governments decide to raise additional revenue. A key policy issue is how the additional tax burden should...

'Experience with European fiscal rules has shown that European rules cannot prevent member states from accumulating high debt levels if they want to. The fact that the ECB increasingly positions itself as a fiscal bailout mechanism implies that the risk of short-term fiscal crises due to a...