Fiscal rules, such as the excessive deficit procedure and the stability and growth pact (SGP), aim at constraining government behavior. Milesi-Ferretti (2003) develops a model in which governments circumvent such rules by reverting to creative accounting. The amount of this creative accounting...

In a dynamic model of fiscal policy, social polarization provokes a deficit bias. Policy advisors have recently proposed that governments running a deficit should be forced to generate additional tax revenue. We show that this deficit taxation reduces the deficit bias as it internalizes the...

Using an unbalanced panel of 27 OECD countries over the period 1970–2011, I examinewhether electoral motives influenced creative accounting. Governments engage in“below-the-line” operations, such as transactions in financial assets, that do not show upin the deficit figures but give rise...

The purpose of this study is to provide an overview of fiscal policies and PFM reforms in 7 countries in the Western Balkans and 12 countries in the CIS, including major macroeconomic and poverty trends, fiscal policy, the size and role of the public sector, public expenditure management and its...

Fiscal rules, such as the Excessive Deficit Procedure and the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP), aim at constraining government behavior. Milesi-Ferretti (2003) develops a model in which governments circumvent such rules by reverting to creative accounting. The amount of this depends on the...

Seit Einführung der neuen Schuldenregel hat sich die Finanzlage der deutschen Bundesländer deutlich verbessert. Nach unseren Berechnungen mit dem Aggregierten Quotierungsverfahren konnten die meisten Länder ihre strukturellen Budgetdefizite abbauen und im Jahr 2017 schon 14 Länder...

Seit Einführung der neuen Schuldenregel hat sich die Finanzlage der deutschen Bundesländer deutlich verbessert. Nach unseren Berechnungen mit dem Aggregierten Quotierungsverfahren konnten die meisten Länder ihre strukturellen Budgetdefizite abbauen und im Jahr 2017 schon 14 Länder...

We study whether and how much the interest bill conditions the size and composition of public expenditures. The group of EU 15 countries over the 1995-2016 period is the object of analysis. We study both total public expenditures and public expenditures by function of government in order to...

With this paper, our objective is to empirically study public debt sustainability by estimating a fiscal reaction function where the primary balance relative to GDP is assumed to be a function of the public debt to GDP ratio of the previous year and of other macroeconomic variables. In...

This study analyzes the correlation between the primary budget balance and the public debt over the last two decades, for a panel of 12 countries from Central and Eastern Europe, in order to assess their debt sustainability, the level of debt at which fiscal fatigue may occur, as well as the...