This paper studies the difference between public production and public finance of public goods in a dynamic general equilibrium setup. By public finance, we mean that the public good is produced by private providers with the government financing their costs. When the model is calibrated to match...

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 surveys the empirical research on fiscal institutions of the last three decades. The main results are: (i) Constitutional or statutory fiscal limitations have in most cases proved to be effective in cutting down public expenditure, revenue, and debt. (ii) Budgetary proce-dures matter...

Previous studies used general government data to examine whether national governments' electoral motives and ideology influenced budget composition in OECD countries. General government data includes, however, the state and local level. Using new data for general and central government over the...

New government spending must be approved by a referendum of citizens in many Swiss cantons. This decisionmaking procedure seems like a simple way to address citizen-legislator agency problems, but little systematic evidence is available concerning its effect on spending outcomes. We estimate...

This article reviews a rapidly growing literature on how climatic risks and events affect public finances around the world. This literature includes empirical evaluations of how past climatic events have affected fiscal outcomes, empirical and model-based assessments of how climatic risks affect...