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...

Despite the growing public debate on fiscal surprise during election periods in jurisdictions where the democratic dispensation is young, comprehensive empirical works to this effect in the case of Africa are hard to find. This study, therefore, sought to contribute to the debate on two counts....

Outsourcing can be defined as the delivery of public services by the private sector. The sign of the effect of outsourcing on public spending is ambiguous ex-ante. While outsourcing may reduce public spending through higher competition in the private sector, it may also increase public spending...

Four years into the deepest recession since World War II, the U.S. economy expanded at a rate of only 0.7 percent in the first half of 2011. This means that the economy is growing at a slower pace than the population and that capita output continues to fall. In response, the president has...

In a stylised framework of fiscal policy determination that considers both structural targets and cyclical factors, we find significant cyclical asymmetry in the behaviour of fiscal variables in a sample of fourteen EU countries from 1970 to 2004, with budgetary balances (both overall and...

With a sluggish economy, high unemployment, and unprecedented deficit spending, growing the economy and curbing federal spending are top priorities in Washington. A now-popular target for reform is regulation, which even President Obama claims to have "stifled innovation" and to have had "a...

We seek to understand how Laffer curves differ across countries in the U.S. and the EU-14, thereby providing insights into fiscal limits for government spending and the service of sovereign debt. As an application, we analyze the consequences for the permanent sustainability of current debt...