For more than 25 years, the Social Security Trust Fund has been projected to run out of money in 2033 (give or take a few years), potentially causing benefits to be severely reduced in the absence of corrective legislative action. Today (February 2024), projections are made by the Social...

The Global Recession of 2008 and ensuing austerity measures have renewed the urgency surrounding the call for fundamental tax reform. Before embarking on fundamental tax reform, this Article proposes adding a critical lens to existing US tax policy to ensure that any proposals for change are...

This paper discusses an alternative route to a balanced budget, namely through debt control. Two models are compared: the debt brake which has been used in Switzerland since 2003 and the debt limitation model proposed by Compact for America. The paper concludes that the former, while apparently...

This paper examines the institutional arrangements of the macro-fiscal function in 16 African countries. Most ministries of finance (MoFs) have established a macro-fiscal department or unit, but their functions, size, structure and outputs vary considerably. Based on a survey, we present data on...

Austerity is a concept that is often used in the public debate. It refers to fiscal policy measures that reduce government spending and raise taxes for the purposes of closing a government budget deficit. This paper analyzes the concept in the context of the current European economic crisis and...

Consecutive years of primary deficits have led to mounting public debt of almost 50% of GDP, one of the fastest increases in Latin America over the last decade. Government attempts to restore fiscal health have been undermined by a gridlocked Congress. While only minor reforms have been enacted...

Años consecutivos de déficits primarios han conducido a una creciente deuda pública de casi el 50% del PIB, uno de los aumentos más rápidos en América Latina en la última década, y los intentos del gobierno para restablecer la salud fiscal se han visto socavados por la paralización en...

Spanish Abstract: A partir de los años noventa, se ha hecho evidente el crecimiento del tamaño del estado colombiano, al pasar del 13% del Producto Interno Bruto (PIB), antes de 1990, hasta alcanzar el 31% del tamaño de la economía en 2008. Esta investigación busca contribuir al debate de...

This paper starts off explaining the arguments put forward to defend the need to reduce the State’s budgetary activity and minimize fiscal deficit in accordance with the institutionalized consensus reached under the Maastricht Treaty and the Stability and Growth Pact. Secondly, it sheds light...

The existing empirical literature on the US federal revenue-expenditure nexus has had mixed findings. Amongst those papers presenting evidence in favor of causation running from taxes to expenditures, support for the conventional, Friedman-type tax-spend hypothesis is nearly ubiquitous. Evidence...