EU Member countries have shown different degrees of ambition to reach a budget position of "close to balance or in surplus". Differences in ambition can only partly be explained by the relative size of cyclical safety margins or differences in the number of votes in the ECOFIN Council. It is...

Public debt has become a severe problem for a great many economies. While the effects of tax policies on the allocation of resources are readily derived, the mechanisms that make public deficits and debt influence the economy are not so easily understood. This book elaborates on the effects of...

Die Eurokrise hat tiefgreifende Veränderungen im Gefüge von Institutionen und Kompetenzen in der Europäischen Union angestoßen, dafür stehen der „Fiskalpakt“ und die „excessive imbalance procedure“. Ein effizientes Governance-System hat sich aber bisher nicht herausgebildet. Die...

This Economic Brief looks at past evidence as to what extent donors' economic cycles have an effect on their aid budgets. It generally finds only a weak correlation of economic growth and aid of OECD donors between 1971 and 2008, and aid was reduced in only about half of all episodes of deep or...