I analyze in this paper a financial program found commonly in developing countries that are engaged in improving structural imbalances. Similar programs have also been adopted in industrialized countries, in the U.K. since 1980 and in the U.S. since 1984. A typical financial program consists of...

This paper asks why Japan has not yet suffered from a sovereign debt crisis, although its gross public debt as a percentage of GDP is much higher than in Greece. We use a simple stylized model to explain the occurrence of both a fundamental and a speculative debt crisis. We apply this model to...

Existing economic indicators and indexes assess economic activity but no single indicator measures the general macro-economic performance of a nation, state, or region in a methodologically simple and intuitive way. This paper proposes a simple, yet informative metric called the Economic...

Forty-five years ago, the A. Philip Randolph Institute issued “The Freedom Budget,” in which a program for economic transformation was proposed that included a job guarantee for everyone ready and willing to work, a guaranteed income for those unable to work or those who should not be...

Over the past three decades, public spending on infrastructure, as a share of GDP, has been on the decline worldwide. Although the link between infrastructure investment and economic growth is not yet fully understood, the quality of infrastructure clearly affects a country's productivity,...

We present a model in which a conservative incumbent with preferences for low public spending can strategically run a budget deficit to prevent the left-wing opposition candidate from choosing high public spending if elected, and possibly also to ensure his own reelection. We find that the...

Using an extensive dataset covering all Portuguese local governments (308), this paper analyzes the determinants of municipal deficits and debt. The results clearly indicate the existence of a political budget cycle, but there is no evidence that fiscal policy is used strategically to condition...

This study examined the differential impact of budget deficit on short and long term interest rates in Nigeria for the period 1970 to 2011. Specifically, this study addressed three issues: the causal nexus between budget deficit and interest rates; the effect of budget deficit on interest rates...

Financial balances of the private, foreign and public sectors long-term tendencies for the European Union (by Roman Römisch; pp. 1-6) Keywords fiscal policy, budget deficits, investments and savings, public-private balances Countries covered European Union Topics Macroeconomic Analysis and...