Regional governments' discretion in allocating structural funds is mainly limited by the competences of the Commission to control implementation and fiscal activities of decentralized governments. In this paper, we analyse implementation of ERDF funds in Eastern Germany in the financial...

In the contemporary capitalism model and in relation to the functioning of the economy there is a counterproductive view of the state as an institution. This has led to a reversal of the hierarchy between the state and the private sector, since it subordinates states to markets. Fiscal policy...

Das Sozio-oekonomische Panel (SOEP) ist als multidisziplinäres Haushaltspanel, das Informationen zu allen Personen, die in einem Panel-Haushalt leben, erhebt und damit alle Altersjahrgänge abdeckt, nach 25 Jahren Laufzeit auch zu einer Kohorten- Studie geworden. Der zunehmende Erfolg der...

The WTO's plurilateral Agreement on Government Procurement ("the GPA" or "the Agreement") is an important ongoing success story for the Organization. In March 2012, the GPA Parties completed a comprehensive revision of the Agreement, encompassing both its text and coverage (market access...

In this paper, we show that, contrary to common beliefs, over the past two decades several countries were able to reduce public spending by remarkable amounts. These countries did not seem to have suffered from these large reductions either in a macroeconomic sense, or in terms of lower values...

This paper examines the link between socio-economic development and fiscal policy. We introduce an indicator for socio-economic development (SEDI) and investigate its relationship with different fiscal variables, using data for the cohesion countries, namely Greece, Portugal, Spain and Ireland...

This study examines reforms of public expenditure in industrialised countries over the past two decades. We distinguish ambitious and timid reformers and analyse in detail reform experiences in eight case studies of ambitious reform episodes. We find that ambitious reform countries reduce...

The empirical literature using vector autoregressive models to assess the effects of fiscal policy shocks strongly disagrees on even the qualitative response of key macroeconomic variables to government spending and tax shocks. We provide new evidence for the U.S. over the period 1955-2006. We...

In this paper we explore the impact of fiscal austerity on three different dimensions of public opinion (overall life satisfaction and confidence, attitude towards national authorities, and European institutions). Based on a panel of 26 EU countries, we find that, overall, fiscal consolidation...

This report summarises the main ideas, proposals, scientific achievements, consensus and conflicting issues that emerged at the Second EFIEA Policy Workshop, held at Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei, Palazzo delle Stelline, Corso Magenta 63, Milan, Italy, March 4th-6th, 1999. EFIEA, the European...