A study of the magnitudes of tax increases, transfer cuts, or reductions in government purchases that would be needed to rectify the huge imbalance in the generational stance of U.S. fiscal policy, concluding that congressionally proposed outlay reductions in nondefense and non-Social Security...

An examination of the continuing generational imbalance in U.S. fiscal policy, showing that under current policy, future generations will have to pay almost half of their lifetime labor incomes in net taxes to balance the government's book--more than 70% greater than the 28.6% today's newborns...

The authors report each country’s total intertemporal public liability as the sum of its explicit outstanding debt and the present values of its implicit liabilities—the excess of projected transfers and government purchases over tax revenues. They find rapid, persistent population aging in...

Despite growing interest among policymakers, there is no theory of independent fiscal institutions. The emerging literature on "fiscal councils" typically makes informal parallels with the theory of central bank independence, but a very simple formal example shows that such a shortcut is flawed....

An examination of the generational imbalance in current Norwegian fiscal policy, showing that despite the government's net wealth, future Norwegians could be facing lifetime net tax burdens twice as large as those confronting today's children.

An examination of the generational imbalance in current Italian fiscal policy, showing that unless dramatic steps are taken soon, future generations' net tax bill will be four or more times the amount that today's newborns are slated to pay.

An update of the baseline generational accounts reported in the 1993 federal budget that extends the analysis to lifetime net tax rates--the taxes that a generation pays, less the Social Security and other transfer benefits that it receives, as a share of income over its entire lifetime.

A discussion of why budget deficits are inadequate measures of the long-run effect of fiscal policy on intergenerational redistributi- on, and an assertion that policy evaluation would be better served by looking at generational accounts.

This paper discusses the role of fiscal institutions, including budget rules and non-partisan agencies, in enhancing fiscal discipline. A dynamic model of fiscal policy shows that optimal institutions lack credibility unless the costs to bypass them are sufficiently high. In our model, a...

This paper proposes a probabilistic approach to public debt sustainability analysis (DSA) using "fan charts." These depict the magnitude of risks-upside and downside-surrounding public debt projections as a result of uncertain economic conditions and policies. We propose a simulation algorithm...