Democracies around the world are making promises to the old at the expense of future generations. I interpret this as reflecting low altruism — a discount rate on children's utility greater than the world interest rate — and I examine the implications in a small open economy with overlapping...

We investigate the political determinants of risk premiums which sub-national governments in Switzerland have to pay for their sovereign bond emissions. For this purpose we analyse financial market data from 288 tradable cantonal bonds in the period from 1981 to 2007. Our main focus is on two...

The Swiss debt brake is widely appreciated as one of the most rationally designed fiscal rules in the world and was thus also discussed as blueprint in the debates about fiscal rules in Germany, the European Union member states and Israel. However, evidence that this rule really contributes to...