The projected path of the U.S. national debt is the major challenge facing American economic policy. Without changes in tax and spending rules, the national debt will rise from 62 percent of GDP now to more than 100 percent of GDP by the end of the decade and nearly twice that level within 25...

Political institutions can affect corruption. We use audit reports from an anti-corruption program in Brazil to construct new measures of political corruption in local governments and test whether electoral accountability affects the corruption practices of incumbent politicians. We find...

Like many other developed economies, the United States has imposed fiscal rules in attempting to impose a degree of fiscal discipline on the political process of budget determination. The federal government has operated under a series of budget control regimes that have been complex in nature...

Political corruption is considered a major impediment to economic development, and yet it remains pervasive throughout the world. This paper examines the extent to which government audits of public resources can reduce corruption by enhancing political and judiciary accountability. We do so in...

The `Excessive Deficit Procedure' of the Maastricht Treaty on Economic and Monetary Union proposes two fiscal convergence conditions for entry and continued membership in the EMU: 1) a country's overall budget deficit for each fiscal year must be equal to or below 3% of GDP, and 2) a country's...

The design of budget rules and institutions, long a neglected area in public finance and macroeconomics, has recently been thrust to center stage by the debate over a balanced budget amendment and other deficit-reduction measures in the United States. This paper describes the existing evidence...