The subject of this paper is four Balkan countries (Albania, Serbia, Macedonia, and Montenegro) that are determined to join the European Union. More particularly, it looks at their work towards accomplishing the political, legal and economic requirements for the EU. Thus, the legislation with...

In this paper, I demonstrate that an indicator which is commonly used to assess the long-term fiscal sustainability of public finances in EU member states (“S2”) is also defined if government borrowing rates are assumed to be permanently lower than the growth rate of GDP. I illustrate this...

This paper presents a model-based fiscal Taylor rule and a toolkit to assess the fiscal stance, defined as the change in the structural primary balance. This is built on the normative buffer-stock model of the government (Fournier, 2019) which includes key channels like hysteresis,...

Since 2008, the world economy has been facing the consequences of the global financial crisis. As a result, many economic policy paradigms have been revised, and this process is far from complete. The policy area, which needs a fundamental rethinking (especially in advanced economies), relates...

We use a controlled laboratory experiment with and without overlapping generations to study the emergence of public debt. Public debt is chosen by popular vote, pays for public goods, and is repaid with general taxes. With a single generation, public debt is accumulated prudently, never leading...