After a brief introduction dealing with critical opinions of some economists on the European austerity policy, the authors point out that austerity as a means of achieving fiscal consolidation and financial stability is applied when the fiscal domain is weak. After analyzing the effects of the...

Fiscal rules are argued to be important for sound and sustainable fiscal policies and have been increasingly adopted over the last 20 years. However, as increased fiscal pressure and fiscal risks urge countries to address the public debt legacy left by recent economic crises, fiscal rules come...