The paper studies empirically the fiscal policy instruments by which governments try to influence election outcomes in 24 developing countries for the 1973-1992 period. The study finds that the main vehicle for expansionary fiscal policies around elections is increasing public expenditure rather...

In response to the recent sovereign debt crisis, the member states of the European Union agreed to enact balanced budget rules in their national legislation. However, little is known about the public's opinion of balanced budget rules. To fill this gap, we conducted a survey among 2,000...

The aim of this paper is to investigate the vulnerability of fiscal policy in the case of 10 Central and Eastern European countries. We use a newly introduce indicator named Cumulative Excess of the Primary Balance (CEPB) which shows the deviations of current fiscal policy from a fiscal rule...

A recent amendment in Pakistan’s federal constitution allows provinces to borrow domestically and abroad. There is a concern that it may generate unsustainable debt burden, considering the country’s delinquent monetary policy and a historical deficit bias. The objective of this paper is to...

Using fiscal reaction functions for a panel of actual euro-area countries the paper investigates whether euro membership has reduced the responsiveness of countries to increases in the level of inherited debt compared to the period prior to succession to the euro. While we find some evidence for...

Uncertainty about the future preferences of the government may induce policy makers to run excessive budget deficits. As a solution to this problem, economists have proposed to impose a binding debt rule. In this paper we argue that a binding debt rule does not eliminate the distortions due to...

This paper studies the determinants of economic growth and the role of the public budget in European Union (EU) member states in Central and Eastern Europe, that joined the European Union in 2004, with a balanced data set from 1996 until 2012. A special focus is set on the relationship between...

We provide a systematic analysis of fiscal consolidation in a medium-scale dynamic general equilibrium model. Our results show that the choice of the consolidation instrument is very important, not only with respect to the short- and long-run output effects of the different consolidation...

Diese Studie untersucht die zeitvariierenden Faktoren, welche die Zinsspreads auf Europäische Staatsanleihen zwischen Q1/1999 und Q1/2010 beeinflusst haben. Vor der Finanzkrise, welche Ende 2007 ihren Anfang nahm, haben Finanzmärkte Kreditrisiken nur sehr begrenzt wahrgenommen und...

This paper provides a set of detailed estimated fiscal reaction functions for a panel of twenty industrialized countries, and it discusses commonalities and differences with regard to systematic fiscal policies across countries. In general, the countries in the panel adjust tax revenues strongly...