In view of the growing attention paid to the role of fiscal governance in budgetary outcomes, this paper tries to shed light on the link between the recent Greek fiscal crisis and aspects of fiscal governance. It reviews fiscal developments in Greece over the last decade and challenges the...

We use a panel of 16 OECD countries over several decades to investigate the effects of government debts and deficits on long-term interest rates. In simple static specifications, a one-percentage-point increase in the primary deficit relative to GDP increases contemporaneous long-term interest...

We consider an economy where competing political parties alternate in office. Due to rent-seeking motives, incumbents have an incentive to set public expenditures above the socially optimum level. Parties cannot commit to future policies, but they can forge a political compromise where each...

This paper considers how environmental policies should respond to macroeconomic downturns. It first explores the implications of the global economic downturn of 2008-09 for environmental policies, focusing in particular on the example of action against climate change. The arguments for and...

Economists generally assume that the state has sufficient institutional capacity to support markets and levy taxes. This paper develops a framework where "policy choices" in market regulation and taxation are constrained by past investments in legal and fiscal capacity. It studies the economic...

We use variation in oil output among Brazilian municipalities to investigate the effects of resource windfalls. We find muted effects of oil through market channels: offshore oil has no effect on municipal non-oil GDP or its composition, while onshore oil has only modest effects on non-oil GDP...

In this paper I argue that the financial crisis is likely to have a long term impact on the level of labour productivity in the UK while leaving the long run growth rate unaffected. Based entirely on pre-crisis data, and using a two-sector growth model, I project the future growth rate of GDP...

The goal of the present paper is to investigate not only the dynamics of the Greek public debt, but also what are the appropriate measures required for achieving fiscal consolidation. The empirical estimation is carried out using a macroeconomic dataset spanning the period 1980-2008 and both the...

The goal of the present paper is to investigate not only the dynamics of the Greek public debt, but also what are the appropriate measures required for achieving fiscal consolidation. The empirical estimation is carried out using a macroeconomic dataset spanning the period 1980-2008 and both the...

This paper analyses the international dimension of fiscal policy using a small open economy framework in which the government finances its spending by levying distortionary taxation and issuing non-state-contingent debt. The main finding of the paper is that, once the open economy aspect of the...