President Biden signed a $1.9 trillion COVID relief package (the “American Rescue Plan”) on March 11, 2021. Without a corresponding increase in taxes, this plan has set off alarm bells for those concerned about the expansion of government deficits and debt. Mainstream economists have raised...

Institutions are not only created and built, but also — and especially — need to be learnt. It is a process which takes place in all economies, but acquires a special importance in less advanced countries. Not only theoretical arguments, but also the practical experience over the past 15...

On May 1, 2004, ten countries in Central, Eastern and Southern Europe will become full members of the EU. The parliaments and monetary authorities of the ten accession countries have already to a large extent adapted their legal and institutional structures to the new Europe-wide environment....

Over 1.8 billion people — from Central Europe to East Asia — have been involved in the great systemic transformation to market economy, civic society and democracy, lasting already a generation. The process has evolved more by chance than by design, and has brought mixed fruits. The...

Due to the interdependence of the contemporary world economy, the great American crisis of 2008-2010 rapidly has become the global crisis. However, it is not just another, only larger than before crisis. It is a fundamental crisis of the capitalist market economy based on neoliberalism....

The Final Report of the National Commission on the Causes of the Financial and Economic Crisis in the United States was released on January 27th, 2011. The strong political differences within the commission prevented the draft of a shared report. In addition to the majority report, two...

We provide a test of the impact of voters' political ideology on economic growth and of the role of preferences for government size as a transmission channel. We focus on France from the beginning of its stable democratic experience in 1871. A move of voters' ideology to the right increases...

This article is the first to renews the old debate of "rules versus. discretion" by introducing propensity score matching methods in macro analysis, such as Tapsoba (2012), and by using instrumental methods, to consider the national stability culture. By taking into account, at the same time,...

There appears to be a strong upward drift in policy-related economic uncertainty after 1960. We consider two classes of explanations for this rise. The first stresses growth in government spending, taxes, and regulation. A second stresses increased political polarization and its implications for...

The economic reforms in Tanzania and Vietnam represent the two typical cases of transition economies in Asia and Africa, particularrly the transformation of the two developing economies from the planned to the market mechanism. In this paper, the two authors, Brian - a British economist and Dinh...