This study explores the impact of balanced-budget rules on states' fiscal policy outcomes, and tests whether this impact depends on the political and economic environments in light of the American states' experience from 2004 to 2010. The findings suggest that (1) budget rules are more binding...

The article looks at fiscal constraints adopted by the U.S. States. It questions the ability of those rules to determine sound budgetary policies. To assess this point it analyses, in the general part, the major kind of constraints so far adopted. Of each major category the focus is upon...

In most rich democracies one finds a tendency for the share in public finance that is available for discretionary spending to shrink. This is because tax revenues do not keep pace with simultaneous increases in fixed expenditures and growing pressures for fiscal consolidation. The present paper...