Societies often rely on simple rules to restrict the size and behavior of governments. When fiscal and monetary policies are conducted by a discretionary and profligate government, I find that revenue ceilings vastly outperform debt, deficit and monetary rules, both in effectiveness at curbing...

This paper is about fiscal consolidation measures (i.e. tax hikes and government spending cuts motivated by a desire to reduce the fiscal deficit and public debt) in euro area (EA) countries. The focus is on analysing the growth effects of fiscal adjustments as well as their implications for...