Fehlt der Bundesregierung ein mittelfristiges Konzept zur Haushaltssanierung? Dr. Barbara Hendricks, Bundesministerium der Finanzen, erläutert mit ihrem Beitrag das Haushaltskonzept der Bundesregierung für das Jahr 2005 und unterstreicht, dass das Konzept einen Weg aus dem Konflikt zwischen...

Gegenstand der Studie ist die Quantifizierung des gleichsam automatischen Einflusses der wirtschaftlichen Entwicklung auf einzelne Budgetkomponenten und das Budget insgesamt, um den Effekt einer hypothetischen Änderung in der Entwicklung des Outputs auf das Budget und das Defizit abzuschätzen...

In this note, I examine how the responsiveness of the Swedish public budget to business-cycle conditions has developed between 1998 and 2009. I document substantial changes in three components behind the budget elasticity: (i) the average level of personal income taxes has fallen substantially,...

This note investigates the impact of greater income inequality on the tax base, on the defacto fiscal space, and the sovereign spreads. Using data from 50 countries in 2005 and in 2010, we find that higher income inequality is associated with a lower tax base, lower de-facto fiscal space, and...

Natural disasters are an important source of vulnerability in the Caribbean region. Despite being one of the more disaster-prone areas of the world, it has the lowest levels of insurance coverage. This paper examines the vulnerability of Belize's public finance to the occurrence of hurricanes...

In this note, I examine how the responsiveness of the Swedish public budget to business-cycle conditions has developed between 1998 and 2009. I document substantial changes in three components behind the budget elasticity: (i) the average level of personal income taxes has fallen substantially,...

This study analyses financial sustainability of the Finnish public sector. Current tax rates are unlikely to yield sufficient tax revenue for financing public expenditure under an ageing population. The estimate of the sustainability gap is 2 1/2 per cent of GDP, for the period 2010 - 2060. The...

This study comes up with a measure of the structural budget balance for the Turkish economy between 2006-2010 in order to assess fiscal stance and evaluate the sensitivity of the budget balance with respect to the business cycles. Calculating structural budget balance requires three steps:...

We extend previous literature on fiscal policy sustainability by introducing non-linear fiscal reaction functions with endogenously estimated state-varying thresholds to capture the behaviour of fiscal policy authorities during "good" and "bad" times. These thresholds vary with the level of...