This paper reassesses, at the light of economic and financial theory, the well-documented recent evolution of the euro area public debt and equity markets. Doing so leads to associating the EMU and the single market with the changes in fundamentals and financial integration with convergence in...

A central equation for the fiscal theory of the price level (FTPL) is the government budget constraint (or "government valuation equation"), which equates the real value of government debt to the present value of fiscal surpluses. In the past decade, the governments of most developed economies...

This paper presents a comprehensive cross-country database of fiscal space, broadly defined as the availability of budgetary resources for a government to service its financial obligations. The database covers up to 200 countries over the period 1990-2016, and includes 28 indicators of fiscal...

Many observers consider the German 'debt brake' beyond criticism. In the current crisis, many European countries have difficulties refinancing their budgets, while the German treasury's funding conditions are most favourable. The 'fiscal compact's' call for the introduction of German-style 'debt...

In this paper I test two models of strategic debt behavior. The general idea is that if a government anticipates the possibility of defeat in the next election it will try to use the debt strategically in order to influence the policy of its successor. Previous empirical studies have either...

This paper estimates the impact on the US economy of four types of uncertainty about (i) government spending, (ii) tax changes, (iii) public debt sustainability and (iv) monetary policy. Following a one standard deviation shock, uncertainty about debt sustainability has the largest and most...

This paper deploys a simple stock-flow consistent (SFC) model in order to examine various contentions regarding fiscal and monetary policy. It follows from the model that if the fiscal stance is not set in the appropriate fashionthat is, at a well-defined level and growth ratethen full...

Panel data for seven Latin American countries are used to assess the influence of public indebtedness on public investment in infrastructure in the period 1987-2001. Debt increases are associated with higher public infrastructure investment, an effect that is robust to the inclusion of many...

This paper examines the fiscal requirements for continuous full employment. We find that (i) changes in the financial behavior of households and firms require adjustments in tax rates and public debt, (ii) the stability of the steady-state solution for public debt depends on the fiscal...

Fiscal policy is needed to avoid dynamic inefficiency and maintain full employment in a modified Diamond OLG model with imperfect competition. A distributionally neutral tax scheme can maintain full employment in the face of variations in household confidence. No variations in taxes will be...