The central contention of this report is that the UK fiscal framework has some desirable features but is not delivering good outcomes. We are in a bad equilibrium. The UK's fiscal framework is based around a set of pass-fail, numerical fiscal rules. The fiscal debate is overly fixated on the...

We provide new evidence on the effects of fiscal consolidation measures on output, unemployment, income inequality and consumer price inflation. To identify causal impacts, we use a narrative-based instrumental variable strategy drawing on historical records of exogenous fiscal changes motivated...

In der kommenden Legislaturperiode entsteht im Bundeshaushalt eine jährliche Finanzierungslücke von mindestens 120 Mrd. Euro, zumindest dann, wenn man die Bedarfe in Infrastruktur, Dekarbonisierung und Verteidigung ernst nimmt. Um Deutschland zu modernisieren, empfiehlt das Papier eine...

Sri Lanka's fiscal adjustment - nearly 8 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) since 2021 - has been exceptionally large by both historical and international standards. It has been critical in stabilizing the economy, reducing fiscal imbalances, and restoring macroeconomic stability. With...

The article reviews the latest version of the proposal for a new Stability and Growth Pact of the European Union, as accepted by the European Parliament in April 2024. After summarising the main changes, the macroeconomic evaluation attempts to gauge whether the main goal of the Pact –...

The Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF), which was adopted to support economic recovery from the COVID-19 crisis, represents the first large-scale EU-wide investment initiative, including decarbonisation goals. Yet temporary RRF spending will not be sufficient to meet the climate targets in...

The reform of the European fiscal rules came into force on 30 April 2024. The new rules, like the former ones, impose a depressive bias on domestic fiscal policies, leaving Member States' no fiscal room for manoeuvre. At the same time, the European Pillar of Social Rights sets ambitious targets...

The objective of this study is to evaluate the fiscal sustainability of Local Government Units (LGUs) in the Visegrad Group economies (Czechia, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia; the V4), focusing on three key hypotheses: (1) LGUs in the V4 are involved in so-called Ponzi games; (2) the adverse...

Public debt has increased steadily over the years, leaving many countries at risk of debt distress and even pushing some to default. This paper analyses the impact of sovereign default on post-default debtto-GDP ratios in 144 countries from 1980 to 2019. Applying the entropy balancing method, we...

This paper develops a world economy HANK model for the Euro Area (EA) Core and Periphery, which captures key features of EA cross‐ and within‐country heterogeneity, to study debt target reforms. We show that fiscal consolidation under the current EA institutional arrangements is quite costly...

We examine the impact of extreme hydrogeological events on local governments' fiscal responses in Italy between 2016 and 2022, with a focus on how local public finances contribute to disaster resilience. Leveraging the staggered timing of disaster declarations and employing a...

Leveraging unprecedented austerity cuts, this paper studies how a large-scale reorganization of police resources induced by the closure of over 70% of police stations - while keeping force-wide police strength constant - affects crime, po- lice effectiveness, civilian cooperation, and residents'...

Between 2010 and 2017, nominal wage growth in the UK public sector was capped at 1% for all workers earning above £21,000 - the median annual salary in 2010. This paper examines the distributional consequences of this policy. We show that the cap reduced the return to observable characteristics...

We examine fiscal policies and parliamentary activities of minority governments in the German states. Our sample includes the 16 German states over the period 1981-2024. The results show that minority governments implemented similar fiscal policies to majority governments. Minority governments...

Der Bundeshaushalt 2026 und der Finanzplan bis 2029 wurden im Kabinett verabschiedet. Zentral sind die darin vorgesehenen Kreditaufnahmen auf der Grundlage der im März 2025 erweiterten Schuldenregeln. Die Beschlüsse der Bundesregierung und die Ausweitung der Verschuldungsräume stehen in einem...

This study applied supervised machine learning algorithms to macro-fiscal panel data from 20 EU member states (2000-2024) to model and predict fiscal stress episodes in the Eurozone. Conventional frameworks for assessing public debt sustainability often rely on static thresholds and linear...

Solomon Islands faces the immediate fiscal challenges of rebuilding cash reserves, improving the quality of public spending, and imposing fiscal discipline on domestic borrowing. To address these challenges while financing necessary investments, it is an urgent priority to improve the...

This Selected Issues paper analyzes key barriers to labor force participation (LFP) in Greece using household and cross-country data and draw on the literature and simulations to discuss policy options, particularly for women for whom the LFP gap is the largest. Using household survey data and...

This paper investigates the relationship between public debt and the effectiveness of fiscal policy, presenting evidence of an inverse relationship between government debt and fiscal multipliers. To explain the results, I develop and calibrate a HANK model tailored to the U.S. economy. The model...

Motivated by the increasing frequency with which business leaders publicly express their views on policy issues and by recent findings on the role of narratives in shaping preferences and behaviors, we investigate ow narratives affect the tax preferences of firm decision-makers. Specifically,...

This paper investigates whether the new expenditure rule of the European Union (EU) can restore dynamic stability and determinacy with bounded public debt in an otherwise unstable economic environment. We build upon the standard New Keynesian dynamic general equilibrium model so as to compare...

The medium-term budget projection for 2025 to 2029 indicates a persistently high need for fiscal consolidation in Austria's public finances. If the consolidation measures announced by mid-April remain unchanged, the general government deficit would remain close to 4 percent of GDP throughout the...

The European Union's fiscal framework, updated in April 2024, aims to strengthen fiscal sustainability and foster public investment. It requires countries to maintain or gradually reduce their public debts to no more than 60 percent of GDP, and ensures compliance with a 3 percent of GDP deficit...

To consider legal standards in empirical research designs, the qualitative information of the law needs to be transferred in a numerical variable. The challenge in creating such a variable consists in finding the right balance between high information density and transparency while keeping the...

The trade-off between consistent (rule-based) and optimal fiscal policy became evident in the zero lower bound era. With such low interest rates, the argument goes, optimal fiscal policy required extending debt financed public investment spending. But while fiscal rules ensured consistency, they...

This paper develops a sovereign default model with capital accumulation, long-term debt, and fiscal rules with two distortions: debt dilution and private underinvestment. Fiscal rules generate a long-run economic expansion because they mitigate default risk caused by dilution, which increases...

I show that in a canonical HANK model, under a balanced budget fiscal rule, the effect of a nominal interest rate peg is much larger than in a representative agent (RA) model. By contrast, under a standard fiscal rule where tax revenue responds gradually to deviations of the debt-to-GDP ratio...