There has been a rising academic debate on the sustainability of deficit spending and accumulated debt in governments across the globe. This correlates with a growing concern that excessive government deficits and accumulated debt will lead to unstable financial environments and a devalued quality of life for future generations. Varying economies with varying fiscal behavior have increased incentives to work toward more responsible fiscal behavior through reining in deficit spending and debt accumulation. The authors of this report seek to understand the process these economies undertook, the procedures they used, and the resulting effectiveness of those procedures on achieving fiscal stability. This paper takes a broad, case-study view of 26 countries and some of the plausible factors and motivations that have led them to aim for fiscal prudence. While case studies like this cannot be definitive on causation, they are certainly suggestive. The report is looking for for policy reforms that may cause better long-run fiscal performance.
Publications
In a joint report from the National Research Council and the National Academy of Public Administration, its authors, including AEI’s Joseph Antos, describe the United States’ fiscal outlook, asserting that the present budgetary path is unsustainable. If today’s policies, particularly those regarding entitlement programs, are left unchanged, Americans will face either a substantial erosion in their standard of living or an extremely severe crisis. The authors propose a choice of four policy paths that the United States could and should pursue to get itself back on track.
The Obama administration has just proposed a new fee — otherwise known as a tax — on the country’s largest financial institutions. The tax aims to recover the difference between the bailout funds provided to these institutions a year and a half ago and the amounts ultimately returned to the Treasury. In so doing, the tax will allegedly reduce the federal deficit by some $90 billion.
Why Government Spending Does Not Stimulate Economic Growth: Answering the Critics
Despite decades of repeated failure, President Obama and Congress continue to promote the myth that government can spend its way out of recession. Heritage Foundation economic policy expert Brian Riedl…
Fiscal strategic interaction is a recurrent topic of recent economic literature. This short paper describes a database created as an instrument to analyze such interactions between Italian municipalities in local…
Recent study of the European Commission on taxation trends confirmed the position of Slovakia among the countries with the lowest tax burden in European Union. With total 29,4 % share on GDP, Slovak government imposed the second lowest taxes upon its economy in 2007. Share of direct taxes on GDP has been the lowest in the whole union.
Super Size It? A Rationale Against Feeding the Leviathan – Julia Toser
The threat of fiscal harmonization – Massimiliano Trovato
“An Economic Rationale for the Net Wealth Tax – Does It Exist?”- Jan Schnellenbach
“Taxonomy of Wealth Taxes” – Philipp Bagus
“Because that’s where the money is!” – Daniel Pellerin
What is the current state of public finance in the EU countries? How did the various governments reacted to the crisis which developed in the second half of 2008? To what extent did it trigger a change in tax policy? IREF has asked scholars and experts from fifteen different EU countries to present and evaluate the 2008 tax policies of their respective countries.
Taxation and Justice : A classical Liberal Perspective – Petra Orogvanyiova
From taxation to Justice – Pierre Bessard
Taxation and Justice – Daniel Pellerin
