This paper explores the impact of political and institutional variables on public investment. Working with a sample of 80 presidential and parliamentary democracies between 1975 and 2012, we find that the rate of growth of public investment is higher at the beginning of electoral cycles and...

Achieving France's medium-term fiscal targets will require significant expenditure efforts. This paper identifies areas where there is scope for increasing expenditure efficiency, with a view to achieving higher quality and more sustainable fiscal consolidation. The methodology is based on a...

This paper provides an empirical analysis of how the frequency and severity of terrorism affect government revenue and expenditure during the period 1970-2013 using a panel dataset on 153 countries. We find that terrorism has only a marginal negative effect on tax revenue performance, after...

The paper analyses theoretically what role fiscal councils could play and surveys empirically the activities of existing councils. Case studies of the Swedish Fiscal Policy Council and the UK Office for Budget Responsibility are done. It is concluded that fiscal councils should be advisory,...

This paper presents a review of the most significant fiscal rules policymakers can choose from. The insights from this review are then applied to the current budgetary situation of the European Union. In the European Union, the supranational Stability and Growth Pact (SGP) should provide the...

This paper studies the impact of recent changes in second pension pillars of three Central and Eastern European Countries on the deficit and implicit debt of their full pension systems. The paper seeks to answer the following questions: what is the impact on the sustainability of Poland's...

How do policy communications on future f iscal targets af fect market expectations and beliefs about the future conduct of f iscal policy? In this paper, we develop indicators of f iscal credibility that quantify the degree to which policy announcements anchor expectations, based on the...

We use a 3-step analysis to assess the sustainability of public finances in the EU27. Firstly, we perform the SURADF specific panel unit root test to investigate the mean-reverting behaviour of general government expenditures and revenues ratios. Secondly, we apply the bootstrap panel...

We examine whether US and German state governments pursue sustainable fiscal policies taking into account fiscal transfers. Using panel data techniques we investigate whether the debt-to-GDP ratio had a positive influence on the primary surplus (Bohn-model). We show that including/excluding...