With gross government debt surpassing 200% of GDP, Japan’s fiscal situation is in uncharted territory. In addition to robust nominal GDP growth, correcting two decades of budget deficits requires a large and sustained fiscal consolidation based on a detailed and credible multi-year plan that...

Following the financial and economic crisis, there was a marked increase in the public debt of the euro area countries, the United States, the United Kingdom and Japan. In addition, without a change of policy, the public debt of those countries would maintain an upward trend, a key factor being...

Past consolidation has allowed the automatic stabilisers to operate fully during the crisis. Further fiscal easing in late 2008 and early 2009 contributed to a markedly widening fiscal deficit in 2010. A newly enacted fiscal rule, which limits the structural budget deficit of the federal...

The paper investigates the effect of asymmetric debt and debt servicing obligations on taxes and primary spending in a standard tax competition model, assuming public debts are pre-determined and in their steady state. The impact of increasing financial market integration and capital mobility on...

Fund expenditure by debt or by taxes is it equivalent? Ricardo, formalized and extended by Barro, says that debt is a future tax and agents, conscious of the future, should not consider the use of debt as different of a deferred payment. But the framework of Barro is so special that the result...

We seek to understand how Laffer curves differ across countries in the US and the EU-14, thereby providing insights into fiscal limits for government spending and the service of sovereign debt. As an application, we analyze the consequences for the permanent sustainability of current debt...

The global economic and financial crisis exacerbated the need for fiscal consolidation in many OECD countries. Drawing lessons from past episodes of fiscal consolidation, this paper investigates the economic environments, political settings and policy measures conducive to fiscal consolidation...

El incremento de las transferencias ligadas a la explotación de industrias extractivas hacia los gobiernos subnacionales ha sido significativo en los últimos años. Ello ha estado acompañado de un crecimiento de la volatilidad de los mismos tanto entre las municipalidades en cada año así...