Many economies in East and Southeast Asia are progressing toward becoming aging or aged societies. The impacts of this demographic transition are multifaceted and far-reaching and include declining tax revenues, leading to fiscal imbalances, and possible increases in government expenditures for...

In this paper, I demonstrate that an indicator which is commonly used to assess the long-term fiscal sustainability of public finances in EU member states (“S2”) is also defined if government borrowing rates are assumed to be permanently lower than the growth rate of GDP. I illustrate this...

In this paper, I demonstrate that an indicator which is commonly used to assess the long-term fiscal sustainability of public finances in EU member states (“S2”) is also defined if government borrowing rates are assumed to be permanently lower than the growth rate of GDP. I illustrate this...

The last two decades have diverged from earlier experience, with many countries having peacetime deficits. Widespread deficits are shown to be linked to expansion of social programs, unmatched by tax revenue increases. Contributing to this were the output slowdowns in the 1970s, and inflation...

Prof. Martin Werding, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, hat in Kooperation mit dem ifo Institut, München, und im Auftrag des Bundesministeriums der Finanzen in der vorliegenden Studie aktualisierte Berechnungen zur Tragfähigkeit der öffentlichen Finanzen erstellt. Dabei wird mit annahmegestützten...

We construct comprehensive public sector balance sheets for Finland for 2000-2016 by complementing general government statistics with data on public corporations and pensions. These static balance sheets show that Finland's public sector net worth at end 2016 was - 160 percent of GDP, after...

This paper investigates how tax revenue elasticities develop with respect to their tax base and analyses the specific impact of the business cycle. The main novelty of the paper is to use revenue data net of discretionary tax measures. Based on an EU country panel for the period 2001-13, we...

Main changes have occurred in the comprehension and practice of fiscal policy over the last century. In this paper we do a brief historical account and show that the prominence of fiscal policy as a policy tool has waxed and waned, a condition that has hindered the capability of researchers to...

This paper analyses the impact of fiscal rules on different public spending categories, namely public expenditure and investment, at the subnational level in Europe. Building on the notion of the deficit bias, we suspect that in the presence of fiscal rules, politicians have an incentive to...

Should a government have more than one fiscal rule constraining fiscal aggregates? If so, why? In this paper, we present a dynamic general equilibrium model of a small open economy featuring an incumbent government to assess how and why implementing a budget balance rule and a debt anchor rule...