Before the 2008 crisis, national fiscal policies were used passively within the European Union to reduce budget deficits and public debt, and the common monetary policy was used actively to control inflation via the interest rates. This policy mix represented the only form of macroeconomic...

Purpose With a newly developed measure of economic freedom across US local government jurisdictions, this paper aims to estimate the relationship between economic freedom and bond ratings. Design/methodology/approach The author uses a battery of cross-sectional econometric models to identify the...