This paper studies welfare consequences of a soft borrowing constraint on sovereign debt which is modeled as a proportional fine per unit of debt exceeding some reference value. Debt is the result of myopic fiscal policy where the government is assumed to have a smaller discount factor than the...

This paper studies welfare consequences of a soft borrowing constraint on sovereign debt which is modeled as a proportional fine per unit of debt exceeding some reference value. Debt is the result of myopic fiscal policy where the government is assumed to have a smaller discount factor than the...

This paper compares constraints on the public debt with constraints on the primary deficit. The analysis takes into account how an optimizing government reacts to the different constraints when deciding on a spending and borrowing plan. We find that the economy behaves similarly under both...

The main consequence of globalization is to accelerate the process of concentrating the wealth all around the world. Nevertheless, it did not contribute to solve the contradictions of capitalism which is not able to boost a long-time accumulation. Therefore, there are tremendous pressures to...

We analyse different forms of international debt mutualisation in a simple framework with a political distortion and (partial) default under adverse economic circumstances. One form is a debt repayment guarantee, which can be "unlimited" or "limited", i.e. only be invoked when the guarantee...

The three-point VAT increase is part of a package in which unemployment payroll taxes will be reduced. Risks to the recovery are balanced but the range of forecasts for 2007 is unusually wide. The priority for Germany is to transmit its external strength to the domestic economy, thus further...

Countries vary widely with respect to the share of government spending on health, a metric that can serve as a proxy for the extent to which health is prioritized by governments. World Health Organization (WHO) data estimate that, in 2011, health's share of aggregate government expenditure in...

The discussion presently taking place in the large eurozone economies about the reform of the social welfare state is dominated by two assertions: Western Europe as an investment location is too expensive due to its high tax burden, and, second, countless jobs are threatened from low-wage...

This evaluation of the Greenland Decision (GD) will feed into the Mid-Term Review of the European Union’s 2014-2020 External Financing Instruments (EFIs), taking place in 2017. The evaluation assesses whether the instrument is fit for purpose to deliver EU resources in keeping with the EU‘s...

We examine the socially optimal wealth distribution in a two-person two-good model with heterogeneous workers and asymmetric social interactions where only one (social) individual derives positive or negative utility from the leisure of the other (non-social) individual. We show that the...