We assess the drivers of fiscal sustainability in 20 OECD economies between 1950 and 2019. We find stable long-term relationships between government revenues and expenditures as well as between the primary budget balance and past public debt ratio for the full panel. Performing an expanding...

We assess public finances solvency for Euro Area countries using quarterly data between 1999Q1 and 2020Q4. Through a country-by-country analysis, the answer to the title question is true. For most countries, (i) the primary budget balance reacts positively to the lagged public debt ratio and...

We assess the drivers of fiscal sustainability in Portugal during the period 1999Q4-2021Q4. We resort to expanding window and Schlicht (2003, 2021)'s time-varying approaches to construct the responses of government revenues to government expenditures and the responses of the primary government...

Small businesses (SMEs) depend on banks for credit. We show that the severity of the Eurozone crisis was worse in countries where firms borrowed more from domestic banks ("domestic bank dependence") than in countries where firms borrowed more from international banks. Eurozone banking...