The economic crisis which started in 2008 led to a strong rise in public debts. The sovereign debt crisis in euro area southern countries broke the unity of the euro area and weakened the ?single currency? concept. The paper shows that this situation is not due to a lack of fiscal discipline in...

The public finances crisis has brought binding fiscal rules proposals back to the forefront. The paper analyses their justifications and specifications, either in a classical or in a Keynesian framework. There is no evidence that public deficits were caused by fiscal indiscipline in recent years...