Within the economic profession, it is a widely held view that the fiscal criteria of the Maastricht treaty are arbitrary numbers without economic foundation. Much of this criticism seems to overlook an important aspect - the strategic dimension of the criteria. This paper focuses on one...

Represents a pioneering attempt to comprehensively explore and assess financial sustainability in Australian local government. While the emphasis falls squarely on Australian local government, Funding the Future draws on extensively on both the international conceptual and empirical literature

The international monitoring of public finances in EMU member states is an essential element of the Stability and Growth Pact. Part of evaluating government budgets involves determining the sustainability of the envisaged consolidation measures. The academic and political debate on this topic...

Motivated by the proliferation of fiscal consolidation episodes in the advent of Monetary Union, this book explains the causes and consequences of fiscal policy in Europe, using theory and empirical evidence from the last four decades