As a result of the prevailing governance structure, economic policy in democracies usually suffers from specific deficiencies. Among these are the predominance of distributive over efficiency objectives, the neglect of long-run effects, and the lack of or biased use of expert knowledge in the...

This volume includes five self-contained chapters in the fields of public debt and fiscal transfer schemes. After an introduction to the topic, chapter 2 shows that the institutional setting of fiscal policy making needs to be considered when assessing the sustainability of fiscal policy. Using...