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...

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...

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...

In the wake of recent scandals involving lobbying and special interest spending on Capitol Hill, each of the houses of the 110th Congress adopted unprecedented legislative, procedural rules that require broad disclosure of spending earmarks and tax provisions that benefit special interests....

This is a conceptual paper on the present economic policies and on the fundamentals of relative economics. This paper is intended to promote a holistic thinking and a broader framework for our development. The author looks at some of the important ideas of scholars relating to economic planning...

We look into Brazil`s public sector accounts during the two administrations of President Fernando Henrique Cardoso: 1995-98 and 1998-2002. We underline the fact that the authorities` attitude was as important as the pace of the structural reforms for understanding the dynamics of the public...

This paper presents the results of an original survey experiment on whether the public prefers “tax expenditures” to “direct outlays” — that is, whether members of the public are more likely to support government spending that takes the form of a tax credit rather than a check or cash....

Long-range Social Security and Medicare spending projections vastly exceed projected program revenues. If left unchecked, the resulting fiscal imbalance (estimated at $40 to $70 trillion in present value terms) would fall primarily on future generations. To avoid generational inequity, and...