The paper addresses first the question of sustainability of debt growth by examining the behavior of taxation implied by fiscal rules respecting a government`s intertemporal budget constraint. Sustainable debt growth may require the tax burden to rise above some socially acceptable level. In...

We show that the correct experiment to evaluate the effects of a fiscal adjustment is the simulation of a multi year fiscal plan rather than of individual fiscal shocks. Simulation of fiscal plans adopted by 16 OECD countries over a 30-year period supports the hypothesis that the effects of...