The recent debt crises in Europe and the U.S. states feature similar sharp increases in spreads on government debt but also show important differences. In Europe, the crisis occurred at high government indebtedness levels and had spillovers to the private sector. In the United States, state...

IMF forecasts and the EU's Fiscal Compact foresee Europe's heavily indebted countries running primary budget surpluses of as much as 5 percent of GDP for as long as 10 years in order to maintain debt sustainability and bring their debt/GDP ratios down to the Compact's 60 percent target. We show...

We consider public debt from a long-term historical perspective, showing how the purposes for which governments borrow have evolved over time. Periods when debt-to-GDP ratios rose explosively as a result of wars, depressions and financial crises also have a long history. Many of these episodes...

This paper explores how state fiscal institutions and political circumstances affect the dynamics of state taxes and spending during periods of fiscal stress. The analysis focuses on the late 1980s, when sharp economic downturns in several regions, coupled with increased expenditure demands, led...

The historical behavior of interest rates and growth rates in U.S. data suggests that the government can, with a high probability, run temporary budget deficits and then roll over the resulting government debt forever. The purpose of this paper is to document this finding and to examine its...

Most states (Vermont is the exception) have a constitutional or statutory limitation restricting their ability to run deficits in the state's general fund. Balanced budget limitations may be either prospective or beginning-of-the-year requirements or retrospective or end-of-the-year...

By discussing the available theoretical and empirical literature, this paper argues that budget procedures and budget institutions do influence budget outcomes. Budget institutions include both procedural rules and balanced budget laws. We critically assess theoretical contributions in this area...

What are the macroeconomic effects of tax adjustments in response to large public debt shocks in highly integrated economies? The answer from standard closed-economy models is deceptive, because they underestimate the elasticity of capital tax revenues and ignore cross-country spillovers of tax...

Puerto Rico's unique characteristics as a U.S. territory allow us to examine the channels through which (sub)sovereign default risk can have real effects on the macroeconomy. Post-2012, during the period of increased default probabilities, the cointegrating relationship between real activity in...

We provide a comprehensive account of the dynamics of eurozone countries from 2000 to 2012. We analyze private leverage, fiscal policy, labor costs and interest rates and we propose a strategy to separate the impact of credit cycles, excessive government spending, and sudden stops. We then ask...