The paper investigates the fiscal effects of Swiss cantonal debt brakes by taking explicitly into account the rules' coverage. An in-depth analysis provides unique evidence that suggests the following: First, fiscal rules at the cantonal level have a negative effect on public deficits, which is...

The euro area will not have a centralised budget and smoothing of country-specific asymmetric shocks via private financial markets will develop only slowly. Mistrust among the governments has caused rigid, even pro-cyclical fiscal policies. Smoothing mechanisms are absent due to the fear that...

Most of the EU budget is spent on redistribution. Large sums of money are transferred from the member state governments to Brussels and back to these governments. Some member states end up as net receivers and some as net payers. Most economists agree that the resources of the budget should be...

There have been widespread criticisms of EMU fiscal institutions. We consider a simple alternative to the deficit ceilings envisaged in the Stability and Growth Pact. We advocate the adoption of deficit targets. National governments should retain discretion in setting deviations from targets,...

Keynes' General Theory (1936) is arguably one of the most important books of the twentieth century. His ideas for stabilizing the aggregate economy have profoundly influenced economic theory as well as popular opinion about what governments can and should do with respect to the business cycle....

In this paper we study the link between elections, fiscal policy and economic growth/fluctuations. The set-up is a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model of growth and endogenously chosen fiscal policy, in which two political parties can alternate in power. The party in office chooses...

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...

This paper studies the experiences with fiscal adjustments in the EuropeanUnion (EU) countries during the transition period to the Economic andMonetary Union (EMU). Using several approaches suggested in the literatureon fiscal adjustments and their macroeconomic effects and in the literatureon...

It is widely argued that Europe's unified monetary policy calls for the international coordination at the fiscal level. We survey the issues involved with such coordination of fiscal policy as a demand management tool and we use a simple model to investigate the circumstances under which...

In this paper we argue that supply-side adjustments (i.e. the reallocation of productive resources between the traded and non-traded sectors) can be an important determinant of the output costs of current account adjustment. The argument relies on the fact that tax evasion is more prevalent in...