Which budgetary institutions result in efficient provision of public goods? We analyze a model with two parties bargaining over the allocation to a public good each period. Parties place different values on the public good, and these values may change over time. We model a budgetary institution...

Which budgetary institutions result in efficient provision of public goods? We analyze a model with two parties deciding the allocation to a public good each period. Parties place different values on the public good, but these values may change over time. We model a budgetary institution as the...

This paper estimates incidence of consumption taxation. We use data from natural experiment that took place in 2004 in the Czech Republic. Not only the value added tax (VAT) rates applicable to a range of goods and services changed but also the classification into the standard vs. reduced rate...

The position of Czech public finances has been pronounced unsustainable by economists, while politicians claim more or less the opposite. Correct judgment is complicated by the purposeful use of arguments by the two groups in disagreement, by use of different methodology to collect the data and...

This paper deals with the growth accounting method used to derive “net fiscal effort”. Net fiscal effort can then provide a clue about whether fiscal policy is expansionary or not, and, together with data on economic performance, can answer the question of the pro- or anti-cyclicality of the...

In this paper, we set out to examine an efficient fiscal-policy framework for a monetary union. We illustrate that fiscal policy’s bias toward budget deficit only temporarily ceased at the end of the 20th century as European countries endeavored to qualify for euro-zone membership, which...

This paper focuses on dynamics of government spending over the business cycle. The literature on this topic has yet mainly focused on the issue of anti- or pro- cyclicality of fiscal policy. Only recently some researchers brought up a notion that response of fiscal policy might display great...

We examine the determinants of the dissent in central bank boards voting records about monetary policy rates in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Sweden, the UK and the US. In contrast to previous studies, we consider 25 different macroeconomic, financial, institutional, psychological or...

We examine the information content of U.S. Fed voting records under the Greenspan chairmanship. We find that the voting records of FOMC members, as captured by the difference between the average voted-for and actually implemented policy rate, signal the future course of monetary policy. The...

We assess whether the voting records of central bank boards are informative about future monetary policy. First, we specify a theoretical model of central bank board decision-making and simulate the voting outcomes. Three different versions of model are estimated with simulated data: 1)...