This paper builds on institutional analysis to generate new conclusions about the economic viability of federalism. It does so by suggesting that Weingast's seminal model of marketpreserving federalism falls short of accounting for the poor fiscal performance of multitiered systems in the...

December 2011 was a critical month for the Euro currency credibility within the Euro Zone. This is because for the latest 5 years of economic and financial crisis ardent economic and political debates are still trying to sort out the sequels of this recession. Within this context, this paper...

This paper builds on institutional analysis to generate new conclusions about the economic viability of federalism. It does so by suggesting that Weingast's seminal model of marketpreserving federalism falls short of accounting for the poor fiscal performance of multitiered systems in the...

This paper sets out to provide an introduction to two sets of questions, and to some relevant literature that has tried to answer them. The first set of questions concern what determines growth in low-income countries, and how the answers are conditioned by the history of fiscal policy design...

This paper examines the development of fiscal rules and budget procedures in EU countries, and their impact of public finances since the mid-1980s. It presents a new data set on institutional reforms and their impact in Europe. Empirical pattern confirm our prediction that more stringent fiscal...

According to reputational models of political economy, a term limit may change the behavior of a chief executive because he does not have to stand for election. We test this hypothesis in a sample of 52 countries over the period 1977-2000, using government spending, social and welfare spending...

States have soft budget constraints when they can expect a bailout by the federal government in the event of a financial crisis. This gives rise to incentives for unsound state fiscal policy. We test whether states with softer budget constraints have higher debt and deficits, receive more...

This paper explores the role of political stability on fiscal policy choices in a time-series analysis over 158 years on the Swiss federal level. We argue that the fiscal-commons problem of public finances is affected by the time-horizon of a finance minister. Arguably, the incentives for an...

During the last three decades there has been an almost continuous undermining of the public interest by private interests operating either outside or inside Greek public administration. The result of this infiltration has been a gradual loss of bureaucratic autonomy to pursue the public...

Fiscal policy has become quite controversial in the post-Keynesian era, the debate over the Obama stimulus package being a contentious recent example. Some pundits go so far as to take the position that macroeconomic theory has failed to meaningfully progress in terms of providing useful...