The paper discusses a number of threats to the financial sustainability of social spending: increased internationalization of national economies, gradually higher relative costs of producing a number of human services, the "graying" of the population, slower productivity growth in the private...

We analyze economic rationales for, and possible alternatives to, the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP). We identify various cross-country spillover effects and domestic policy failures as potential rationales. The two sets of problems suggest different corrective measures, and different measures...