In the aftermath of the global financial crisis and great recession, many countries face substantial deficits and growing debts. In the United States, federal government outlays as a ratio to GDP rose substantially from about 19.5 percent before the crisis to over 24 percent after the crisis. In...

Fiscal convergence has always represented one of the objectives of decision factors from EU member states. An important step in this direction was recently made, through signing of the Fiscal Stability pact by 25 member states. Thus, clear limitations were established for the budget deficit,...

The article focuses on the concept of fiscal sustainability in light of the European Commission’s Fiscal Sustainability Report 2012. The author discusses the concept of fiscal sustainability and examines sustainability indicators (S1 and S2) in the context of a sovereign debt crisis and...

We provide a systematic analysis of fiscal consolidation in a medium-scale dynamic general equilibrium model. Our results show that the choice of the consolidation instrument is very important, not only with respect to the short- and long-run output effects of the different consolidation...

To put public debt on a sustainable path, many governments face the task of enacting large fiscal consolidation followed by years of sustained primary surpluses. By estimating hazard functions for the duration of consolidations, we analyse the features of past consolidation efforts across a...

Implementation of fiscal consolidation by advanced economies in coming years needs to take into account the short and long-run interactions between economic growth and fiscal policy. Many countries must reduce high public debt to GDP ratios that penalize long-term growth. However, fiscal...

Portugal's program implementation is on track despite difficult economic conditions and significant legal challenges. The markedly weaker economic outlook provides a strong case for recalibrating the program’s fiscal targets. This strong adjustment effort needs to be consolidated by...

This paper examines the pricing of public debt in a quantitative macroeconomic model with government default risk. Default may occur due to a fiscal policy that does not preclude a Ponzi game. When a build-up of public debt makes this outcome inevitable, households stop lending such that the...

We develop a macroeconomic model where the government does not guarantee to repay debt. We ask whether movements in the price of government bonds can be rationalized by lenders' unwillingness to fully roll over debt when the outstanding level of debt exceeds the government's repayment capacity....

This paper develops a simple Keynesian model of growth with endogenous technological change in which the long-run rate of growth of the economy is determined by both demand and supply forces to examine the effects of government fiscal policy. The paper first assumes that the government budget is...