The euro crisis remains unresolved and the euro currency union incomplete and extraordinarily vulnerable. The euro regime’s essential flaw and ultimate source of vulnerability is the decoupling of central bank and treasury institutions in the euro currency union. We propose a “Euro...

When taxes do not sufficiently adjust to government debt levels, the Fiscal Theory of the Price Level predicts that other variables, such as inflation and output gap, must adjust to ensure the solvency of public finances. We study the role of optimal debt maturity portfolios in this context,...

Die bisher vom Bund im Rahmen der Ausnahme von der Schuldenbremse aufgenommenen Notkredite müssen zwischen 2028 und 2061 getilgt werden. Vor diesem Hintergrund werden die rechtlichen Rahmenbedingungen, die fiskalischen Auswirkungen und die Herausforderungen beim Schuldenmanagement näher...

In the aftermath of the global financial crisis and great recession, many countries face substantial deficits and growing debts. In the United States, federal government outlays as a ratio to GDP rose substantially from about 19.5 percent before the crisis to over 24 percent after the crisis. In...

The recent euro area sovereign debt crisis has shown the importance of market reactions for the sustainability of debt. The objective of this paper is to calculate endogenous government debt limits given the markets assessment of the probability to default. The estimated primary balance reaction...

Our previous assessment of debt sustainability in developing Asia, conducted in 2011, found that the region's fiscal outlook was mostly benign. In this study we update the debt sustainability assessment, taking stock of the latest data and including a larger number of countries. With the benefit...

In the aftermath of the global financial crisis and great recession, many countries face substantial deficits and growing debts. In the United States, federal government outlays as a ratio to GDP rose substantially from about 19.5 percent before the crisis to over 24 percent after the crisis. In...

In the wake of the financial crisis there has been renewed focus on the importance of a country’s net external debt position in determining domestic interest rates and, relatedly, its vulnerability to a crisis. This paper extends the panel estimation of OECD countries described in Turner and...

This paper introduces a new probabilistic approach to sovereign debt projections and presents new estimates of debt ratios through 2020 for Italy and Spain. The new approach takes account of likely correlations across 243 alternative scenarios with three states (good, baseline, bad) for five key...