To curb the rise of government debt it is necessary to evaluate public expenditures and revenues in terms of their necessity and efficiency. Notwithstanding the potential to improve the balance by raising taxes or levying new ones this article concentrates on adjustment options on the...

As a result of the economic crisis many countries are battling rising debt once more. Therefore political discussions about future consolidation strategies are becoming more frequent. As there is a large number of relevant studies on to fiscal adjustment, this article tries to sum up and compare...

In numerous countries the global financial and economic crisis has entailed a surge of government debt, which will call for enhanced consolidation efforts in the future. In the past consolidation strategies focusing primarily on spending cuts proved sustainable, whereas mostly revenue-based...

Compared to eight other European countries (Belgium, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Slovenia, Finland, Sweden, UK), Austria's labour market performance is better than average. In 2008, a higher-than-average share of the working-age population (15 to 64 years) had jobs and the share of the...

In order to progress towards a more fiscally sustainable pension system, reforms to encourage a prolonged working life and later retirement were implemented in Austria in 2000 and in 2003. An evaluation of the retirement behaviour of (former) wage earners retiring between 1998 and 2007 shows a...

The introduction of decoupled direct payments in the EU was a substantial change of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) in 2003. After decoupling direct payments from production, it has become evident that distributional objectives are the major justification of farm payments. There are three...

It is frequently claimed that high levels of generalised trust are conducive for economic reforms. In contrast, the "traditional view" on institutional and political constraints on the executive (IPCE) postulates that high IPCE tend to paralyse the decision-making process, thus blocking required...

Recent research has shown that the degree to which people feel they are in control of their lives is an important correlate of individual happiness, where those that feel more in control are also found to be systematically happier. In turn, the economic sources of perceived life control are only...