The comparative study of debt and fiscal consolidation has acquired a new focus with the re-emergence of debt as a major problem consequent upon the global financial crisis. This leads us to re-evaluate the literature on fiscal consolidation that flourished during the 1980s and 1990s. We...

This paper reports the preliminary work under way to analyse the composition of public spending in response to increased economic openness in the advanced industrial societies over recent decades. The compensation hypothesis predicts that public spending will rise in response to greater...