This paper proposes a dynamic politico-economic theory of fiscal policy in a world comprising a set of small open economies, whose driving force is the intergenerational conflict over debt, taxes, and public goods. Subsequent generations of voters choose fiscal policy through repeated elections....

In this paper we evaluate internationally agreed limits on public sector debt and deficits, such as those agreed by the EC countries in the Treaty of Maastricht as preconditions for membership in a monetary union. These fiscal convergence criteria require that general government budget deficits...

Assuming the role of debt management is to provide hedging against fiscal shocks we consider three questions: i) what indicators can be used to assess the performance of debt management? ii) how well have historical debt management policies performed? and iii) how is that performance affected by...

The fiscal gains from, and hence the political incentives for, an increase in the inflation rate of ten percentage points may be substantial: Swedish data from 1994 suggests an annual real flow of 3–4% of GDP, or a capitalized value of nearly 100% of GDP. These gains would have arisen mainly...

Fiscal rules, such as the excessive deficit procedure and the stability and growth pact (SGP), aim at constraining government behaviour. Milesi-Ferretti (2003) develops a model in which governments circumvent such rules by reverting to creative accounting. The amount of this creative accounting...

Avocates of formal fiscal restraints on the member states of the European Monetary Union often argue that US experience proves that a monetary union needs such constraints to guarantee the stability of the common currency. We show, first, that the origin of formal fiscal restraints on US state...

The defaults of Philip II have attained mythical status as the origin of sovereign debt crises. The king failed to honour his debts four times during his reign. In this paper, we reassess the fiscal position of Habsburg Spain. New archival evidence allows us to derive comprehensive estimates of...

If a nation fails to satisfy its intertemporal budget constraint (IBC) then, like a government or a household, either it will become insolvent or it can consume more of its income. The main purpose of this paper is to establish necessary and sufficient conditions for a nation to satisfy its IBC,...

We investigate how "news" affected domestic interest spreads vis-à-vis Germany and how it propagated to other countries during the recent crisis period, thereby distinguishing between the so-called GIIPS countries and other European countries. We make original use of the Eurointelligence...

The paper surveys and extends recent results on the effect of changes in government fiscal and financial policy, and in private savings behaviour, on economic growth. Private saving behaviour is represented by an overlapping generations (OLG) model. The supply side of the model permits...