The fiscal commons problem is one of the most prominent explanations of excessive spending and indebtedness in political economics. The more fragmented a government, the higher its spending, deficits and debt. In this paper we investigate to what extent this problem can be mitigated by different...

Sustainablity of Austrian public debt is investigated in the context of political objectives such as stabilizing the business cycle, increasing chances for being re-elected and implementing the ideologies of political parties. Several tests indicate that Austrian fiscal policies were sustainable...

This paper explores the role of political stability on fiscal policy choices in a time-series ana-lysis over 158 years on the Swiss federal level. We argue that the fiscal-commons problem of public finances is affected by the time-horizon of a finance minister. Arguably, the incentives for an...