For more than 25 years, the Social Security Trust Fund has been projected to run out of money in 2033 (give or take a few years), potentially causing benefits to be severely reduced in the absence of corrective legislative action. Today (February 2024), projections are made by the Social...

In this paper, we compare growth and welfare effects of various budget rules within an endogenous growth model with productive public capital, utility enhancing public consumption and public debt. We find that a fixed deficit regime does not affect the long run growth rate compared to a balanced...

Based on probit estimates, this paper analyzes the effects of fiscal consolidation on the proba-bility of sovereign defaults in the short run. Using a panel of 104 developing countries from 1980 to 2009 and controlling for various economic, fiscal and political factors, we find that fiscal...

The Italian Great Recession has a double-dip pattern. After the start of the global financial crisis, Italy experienced a second serious recession in 2011 because of the sovereign debt crisis. The reaction of Italian governments was mild at the beginning and more convinced since the start of the...

The study analyses the dynamics and the structure of Ukraine's public finances. It assesses the medium-term impact of fiscal austerity 2014-2016, examines fiscal sustainability and estimates further fiscal adjustment efforts. It evaluates the economic and social implications of current fiscal...

Über die letzten 30 Jahre hat sich in der Europäischen Union (EU) ein komplexes Geflecht an nationalen und supranationalen Fiskalregeln mit dem Ziel nachhaltiger öffentlicher Finanzen herausgebildet. Derweil haben die staatlichen Maßnahmen zur Abfederung der wirtschaftlichen Folgen der...

The Social Security "full retirement age" (FRA) is the age at which retirement income benefits are available without reduction for early commencement. Presently, that age is 67 for those born in 1960 or later. This paper is about the unfair and unnecessary threat to reduce Social Security...

We discuss and provide an overview of the size and role of the government, notably in terms of what the government "should" do, how the government could spend and intervene in the economy, how much governments spend and what they spend their money on. This is done from a historical perspective...

During the last three decades there has been an almost continuous undermining of the public interest by private interests operating either outside or inside Greek public administration. The result of this infiltration has been a gradual loss of bureaucratic autonomy to pursue the public...

Employing data from a representative survey conducted in Germany, this paper examines public preferences for the size and composition of government expenditure. We focus on public attitudes toward taxes, public debt incurrence, and public spending in six different policy areas. Our findings...