The paper addresses first the question of sustainability of debt growth by examining the behavior of taxation implied by fiscal rules respecting a government`s intertemporal budget constraint. Sustainable debt growth may require the tax burden to rise above some socially acceptable level. In...

The work surveys the Italian experience with reference to growth and public debt. It does not seek to test conflicting views, as the effects of some financial and policy innovations are too recent and some data is of poor quality. Rather, its more limited scope is to draw on past experience and,...