Local governments in Japan account for about 80 per cent of general government spending when excluding social security expenditures. Therefore, for the implementation of fiscal policy it is important how local governments will behave. On the basis of the economic theories on fiscal federalism it...

The empirical and theoretical literature on long-term relationships in public finance is dominated by two approaches: Fiscal sustainability and Wagner’s law of an increasing state activity. In this paper, we argue that these two relationships should be analyzed simultaneously and not...

We construct a comprehensive public sector balance sheet for Finland from 2000 to 2016 by complementing general government statistics with data on public corporations and public pensions. We show that exposure to valuation changes in equity markets through asset holdings and increases in pension...

The present paper aims to analyze the major changes in the German system of cross-holdings between banks and industrial or financial companies. After an overview on the role of banks in bank-based versus market-based financial systems, and on the German system of corporate control, we focus our...

The question raised in this paper is whether changes over the last 20 years in the German financial accounting system signal a retreat of the nation state from this policy field. Using a comprehensive perspective on accountancy we consider the steps in the accounting process, i.e. standard...