After a brief introduction dealing with critical opinions of some economists on the European austerity policy, the authors point out that austerity as a means of achieving fiscal consolidation and financial stability is applied when the fiscal domain is weak. After analyzing the effects of the...

Japan’s gross government debt of 226% of GDP in 2018 is the highest ever recorded in the OECD area, and places the economy at risk. The government now aims to achieve a primary surplus by FY 2025. Additional fiscal consolidation, based on a detailed plan covering specific spending cuts and tax...

With gross government debt of 219% of GDP in 2016, Japan’s fiscal situation is in uncharted territory and puts the economy at risk. In addition to raising productivity and growth, Japan needs a more detailed and credible fiscal consolidation path, including specific revenue increases and...

We identify investor moral hazard in the German fiscal federation. Our identification strategy is based on a variable, which was used by the German Federal Constitutional Court as an indicator to determine eligibility of two German states (Länder) to a bail-out, the interest payments-to-revenue...

Die Finanzreform des Jahres 2006 war im Wesentlichen darauf gerichtet, die Entscheidungsblockaden zwischen Bund und Ländern durch die Reduzierung zustimmungsbedürftiger Gesetzte aufzubrechen. Die Föderalismuskommission II diskutiert nunmehr weitere Reformen der Finanzverfassung. In der...

This paper assesses the interactions of horizontal fiscal equalisation schemes with debt policy by sovereign regional governments. Local public goods are either financed by debt or taxation. A horizontal equalisation scheme eleviates regional public revenue disparities under horizontal and...

In both academic research and policymaking, public sector debt and debt-to-GDP ratios are relied on for a multitude of important economic, political and socioeconomic decisions, especially as public sector balance sheets expand to an unprecedented size in the midst of the 2019–2020 COVID...

To carry out the analysis required for monetary policy, the European Central Bank (ECB) and the European System of Central Banks (ESCB) need comprehensive and reliable government finance statistics. The focus of government finance statistics has traditionally been the government as a whole...

This paper assesses the interactions of horizontal fiscal equalisation schemes with debt policy by sovereign regional governments. Local public goods are either financed by debt or taxation. A horizontal equalisation scheme elevates regional public revenue disparities under horizontal and...

We show that the optimal inflation target imposed on a discretionary central bank varies with the extent of fiscal decentralization. Our analysis compares two fiscal regimes for local government bond management: the partially decentralized (PD) regime where the central government determines the...