Fiscal policy in Britain has changed radically since the Keynesianism of the 1960s and 1970s. After a passive period under monetarism of the 1980s, fiscal policy is said to have adopted a leadership role with long term objectives (low debt, the provision of public services/ investment, and...

This paper analyses the effects of containment measures and monetary and fiscal responses on US financial markets during the Covid-19 pandemic. More specifically, it applies fractional integration methods to analyse their impact on the daily S&P500, the US Treasury Bond Index (USTB), the S&P...

We present a theoretical model of a parliamentary democracy, where party structures, government coalitions and fiscal policies are endogenously determined. The model predicts that, relative to proportional elections, majoritarian elections reduce government spending because they reduce party...

This paper analyses the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on stock market returns and their volatility in the case of the G20 countries. In contrast to the existing empirical literature, which typically focuses only on either Covid-19 deaths or lockdown policies, our analysis is based on a...

This paper surveys some recent literature on fiscal policy and comparative politics. Economic policy is viewed as the outcome of a game with multiple-principals and multiple-agents. Opportunistic politicians bargain over policy. Rational voters hold them accountable through retrospective voting....

We investigate the effect of electoral rules and political regimes on fiscal policy outcomes in a panel of 61 democracies from 1960 and onwards. In presidential regimes, the size of government is smaller and less responsive to income shocks, compared to parliamentary regimes. Under majoritarian...

Many countries, especially developing ones, follow procyclical fiscal policies, namely spending goes up (taxes go down) in booms and spending goes down (taxes go up) in recessions. We provide an explanation for this suboptimal fiscal policy based upon political distortions and incentives for...

We examine the sustainability of public finances and its determinants for 19 Eurozone countries from 1995 to 2020. We conclude for the existence of panel cointegration between government revenues and expenditures; primary government balance and one-period lagged public debt-to-GDP ratio; and...

Using a panel of annual data for 20 countries we show that synchronized fiscal consolidation (stimulus) programmes in different countries make their business cycles more closely linked, especially in the case of fiscal adjustments lasting 2 or 3 years. We also find: (i) little evidence of...

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...