Public spending devolution in practice is widely seen as more appropriate for addressing varied political aspirations within state boundaries than is tax devolution. A drawback is that devolved public spending may be subject to irresistible upward pressure, as illustrated by 'formula drift' of...

What are the prospects for New Member States to join the euro-zone in the not too distant future? They seem to be in a catch-22 situation Because of the current financial crisis some Maastricht criteria would be more difficult to fulfil in the short and medium term, which would make it hard for...

The current financial and economic crisis has highlighted the inadequacy of existing institutional and policy arrangements at the EU level. Even before this crisis, the EU economic growth was low, by international standards, revealing deep structural problems across EU countries, especially in...

What are the prospects for New Member States to join the euro-zone in the not too distant future? They seem to be in a catch-22 situation. Because of the current financial crisis some Maastricht criteria it would be more difficult to fulfill in the short and medium term, which would make it hard...

In the second half of the 20th century, Spain provides a case of political regime change, which according to some political economy models should also lead to a shift in the cyclical nature of fiscal policy. We find that in most of the pre-democratic era, there was a strong procyclical bias to...

Was Spanish fiscal policy destabilizing? We estimate policy reaction functions and test the impact of fiscal shocks on growth volatility over the period 19501998. We find that a transition from pro-cyclical to countercyclical fiscal policy occurred in the late years of the Franco regime,...