L’épineux problème d’interaction négative entre crise de la dette souveraine et crise bancaire au niveau national empêche une transmission efficace des effets de la politique monétaire unique et menace l’existence même de la zone euro. En réponse à la crise de l’euro et après...

Owing to slow growth and a relatively weak fiscal position, Portugal’s public debt had been rising for almost a decade when the global crisis struck, sharply increasing the deficit. The loss of confidence in Portuguese and other euro area sovereign bonds required international financial...

The challenge for fiscal policy in Slovakia is to achieve fiscal consolidation in a way which supports the fragile recovery and protects spending on areas which are important for re-embarking on a trajectory of high trend growth and underpinning a catch-up in living standards. While the recently...

The Maastricht definition of government debt constitutes a central pillar of the European fiscal governance architecture. When EU member states agreed on the definition as part of the euro convergence criteria, they took a narrow approach to debt. The 2008 financial crisis and later the euro...

This paper explores the political economy of fiscal adjustment. It begins with an examination of the evidence for, and sources of, ‘deficit bias', including political and governance factors, public attitudes, the role of financial markets and imprecision about which debt targets should be...

This paper explores the political economy of fiscal adjustment. It begins with an examination of the evidence for, and sources of, ‘deficit bias’, including political and governance factors, public attitudes, the role of financial markets and imprecision about which debt targets should be...

Ireland’s banking crisis, one of the most severe in the OECD area, and the associated economic recession have taken a heavy toll on public finances. Large public deficits have accumulated since 2008 and net public debt, which had been eliminated, has soared once again. The rapid deterioration...

The international economic crisis hit Ireland hard from 2007 on. Ireland’s membership of the Euro had a significant effect on the policy configuration in the run-up to the crisis, as this had shaped credit availability, bank incentives, fiscal priorities, and wage bargaining practices in a...

Although fiscal imbalance and its adverse effects on macro economic equilibrium in India have been receiving wide attention, the issue at States' level has not so far been adequately analyzed. In many respects, fiscal situation in States is more critical than that at the Centre as States have...

The European Union's constitutional balanced-budget amendment, the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP), dictates that EU member states keep their budget deficits within three percent of GDP and that government debt be kept at or below 60 percent of GDP. After 20 years, unintended consequences of the...