One commonly held view about the difference between continental European countries and other OECD economies, especially the United States, is that the heavy regulation of the former reduces their growth. Using newly assembled data on regulation in several sectors of many OECD countries, we...

This paper evaluates the effects of fiscal policy on investment using a panel of OECD countries. In particular, we investigate how different types of fiscal policy affect profits and , as a result, investment. We find a sizable negative effect of public spending -- and in particular of its...

This paper evaluates the effects of fiscal policy on investment using a panel of OECD countries. We find a sizeable negative effect of public spending--and in particular of its wage component--on profits and on business investment. This result is consistent with different theoretical models in...

This paper evaluates the effects of fiscal policy on investment using a panel of OECD countries. We find a sizeable negative effect of public spending—and in particular of its wage component— on profits and on business investment. This result is consistent with different...

One commonly held view about the difference between continental European countries and other OECD economies, especially the United States, is that the heavy regulation of Europe reduces its growth. Using newly assembled data on regulation in several sectors of many OECD countries, we provide...

We use newly assembled data on regulation in several sectors of many OECD countries to provide evidence that regulatory reform of product markets is associated with an increase in investment. A component of reform that plays a very important role is entry liberalization, but privatization also...

This paper studies how the composition of fiscal adjustments influences their likelihood of “success”, defined as a long lasting deficit reduction, and their macroeconomic consequences. We find that fiscal adjustments which rely primarily on spending cuts on transfers and the government wage...

This paper provides a critical survey of the literature on politico-institutional determinants of the government budget. We organize our discussion around two questions: Why did certain OECD countries, but not others, accumulate large public debts? Why did these fiscal imbalances appear in the...