The business model used by Congress to pay for Social Security, Medicare and national debt is our costliest federal mandate. Because they run a national retirement plan without using compound interest, Congress makes us pay TWELVE dollars to do a ONE-dollar job. This business model is the root...

According to the results of Q3 2022, total revenues of consolidated budgets of the subjects of the Russian Federation amounted to Rb14.06 trillion, which is by 17.9% higher than the value of this indicator for the same period in 2021 and exceeds the annual inflation rate. These figures have been...

At present, the State Duma is reviewing the draft federal budget in 2018–2020, which is characterized by a conservative forecast of the price of oil, dramatic reduction of the expenditures as a result of new budget rules being applied and a high level of state borrowings. In addition, with the...

This paper discusses an alternative route to a balanced budget, namely through debt control. Two models are compared: the debt brake which has been used in Switzerland since 2003 and the debt limitation model proposed by Compact for America. The paper concludes that the former, while apparently...

This paper examines the impact of budgetary institutions on public finances in the European Union on the basis of a critical survey of the relevant theoretical and empirical literature. In general, the authors find that fiscal institutions (namely fiscal rules) have successfully contributed to...

Continuous federal budget deficits and a rising public debt have been presented in terms that have produced mounting dissatisfaction with government. One solution offered to deal with this discontent has been a constitutional amendment to balance the federal budget. In a working paper, Charles...

We discuss two essential problems of the political economy of public finances: The principal agent problem between voters and elected politicians and the common pool problem arising from the fact that money drawn from a general tax fund is used to pay for policies targeting more or less narrow...

This paper examines the rationale for the imposition of fiscal rules as a way to reduce budgetary imbalances. It presents theoretical arguments for the existence of a quot;fiscal deficit biasquot; and the empirical evidence on the economic, political and institutional factors leading to this...

The key parameters of the federal budget showed faster growth of revenues over expenditures at the end of Q1 2017 compared with Q1 2016. Thus revenues increased by 2.7 p.p. of GDP as budget expenditures gained 0.8 p.p. of GDP. As a result, the budget deficit was curtailed to 1.4% of GDP and the...

The paper focuses on issues related to the procedure for determining the different types of budget balance in compliance with the consolidated fiscal programme (CFP) and the national budget, and their economic interpretation. The paper also specifies that the numeric value which states the...