The current economic crisis has hit all European countries hard, but some are more severely affected than others. The problems manifest in European peripheral countries that are also members of the Eurozone, that is, Ireland, Spain, and Greece, have roots in domestic policy mistakes. However,...

Douglass North is a uniquely creative and inspiring social scientist. The impact of North’s ideas in the area development cooperation can hardly be overstated. By stressing the role of institutions, this scholar has immensely influenced development thinking and practice, providing intellectual...

Since the turn of the millennium the aid business has witnessed an important shift in the conceptualization and practice of aid delivery. The move towards harmonized and aligned approaches, including the need to make aid more predictable and flexible, introduced the budget support modality....

This paper undertakes a structured, focused case-study comparison of housing bubbles in Ireland and Spain, based on the selection of two most-different cases that nonetheless share a common outcome of interest. Both countries were exposed to the same set of changes in their international policy...

This paper adopts a new analytical approach to explaining choices in fiscal politics in Ireland and Spain between 2008 and 2010, in response to international economic crisis. It adopts a comparative cross-national research design to explore why two countries with similar pre-crisis fiscal...

The international economic crisis hit Ireland hard from 2007 on. Ireland’s membership of the Euro had a significant effect on the policy configuration in the run-up to the crisis, as this had shaped credit availability, bank incentives, fiscal priorities, and wage bargaining practices in a...

The current economic crisis has hit all European countries hard, but some are much more severely affected others. The problems manifest in European peripheral countries, especially Ireland, Spain, and Greece, have roots in domestic policy mistakes. However, the European context of these policy...

Austerity measures in response to Eurozone crisis have tended to be conceived, debated, and implemented as if only the technical parameters of budget management mattered. But policies that impose budgetary hardships on citizens, whether in the form of increased taxes or cuts to public spending...

The comparative study of debt and fiscal consolidation has acquired a new focus in the wake of the global financial crisis. This leads us to re-evaluate the literature on fiscal consolidation that flourished during the 1980s and 1990s. The conventional approach segments episodes of fiscal change...