Public spending

In response to the financial crisis in the euro zone, the Lithuanian Free Market Institute (LFMI) has worked out and submitted to public institutions a plan which would help countries potentially exiting the euro zone to build stable and sound money. LFMI‘s proposal can be also used by the euro zone when attempting to strengthen the euro and to restore people‘s confidence in the single currency.

is the amount needed by Spanish banks to avoid the clash, revealed the Spanish government last week. This is supposed to be good news for European taxpayers who will have…

WP 2012-03. Executive Summary Update Jul’14: The paper has been published by Palgrave Macmillan and is available on Amazon. The European crisis is not behind us and easy solutions do…

The French Cour des Comptes (National Audit Office) published this Monday a new report on public finances. Without surprise, the ambition to limit the budget deficit to 4.4% of GDP in 2012 is confirmed to be unrealistic. An extra six to ten billion euro would be necessary in order to meet this commitment, and this is without taking into account the new promises and expenses scheduled since François Hollande’s election. Meanwhile, the new financial Minister Pierre Moscovici, keeps claiming his profound hostility to austerity and budget cuts.

This paper is excerpted from the forthcoming “IREF’s Yearbook on Taxation” 2012

In an unprecedented and historical move, the European Union forced the Irish government against its stated wishes to indebt itself in an € 85 billion international bailout comprising of the IMF, EU and bilateral loans. This bailout to ensure that the Irish government would continue to pay 100% of face value on maturing senior bonds in zombie banks will have increased government debt by over 40% of GDP by the time the bailout is completed in 2015. Despite such catastrophic economic conditions, the Irish economy is showing signs of recovery. In 2011, Ireland generated a record high annual trade surplus of just under € 44.7 billion, up by 3% on 2010. Regarding public finances, the 2011 budget saw a closing of the deficit by a further €6 billion. Budget adjustment over the period 2011-2014 is realized for two thirds through expenditure reductions and one third should be raised by taxation. It has been called the most “draconian” budget in the history of the state.

In an interview with the Guardian, Madam Lagarde says it is time for Greece to pay back and insists on the fairness of it – “Greeks have to pay taxes now and assume their past mistakes,” she says, adding that “As far as Athens is concerned, I also think about all those people who are trying to escape tax all the time”. If her mathematics is somehow correct, she obviously doesn’t think about those who did not participate in the government’s wasting of money and find themselves today on the same boat with all the others.

This is the decrease in the rate of economic growth per capita that results from an increase in the tax revenue to GDP ratio by 10 percentage points. This is…

Executive Summary

The main purpose of this paper is to investigate whether, and to which extent, the rules introduced by central governments effectively restrain the spending behaviour of the decentralized authorities. In this paper, the authors provide an innovative comparative analysis by considering two countries that share the same degree of economic development and many cultural traits – France and Italy. Yet, these two countries differ in one crucial respect. France has a tradition of strong centralization, bureaucratic discipline and detailed technocratic control on the periphery (the regions). By contrast, Italy is known to follow a more flexible approach, which allows for some negotiation between the central and the peripheral authorities and feeds expectations for assistance and bail-outs, should the regions engage in excessive spending and violate the budgetary rules set by the centre.

This is the US debt reduction over the next 10 years claimed in President Obama’s latest budget proposal. After careful examination of this amount it appears nevertheless that the spending…

We all receive from and give to the State. But exactly how much ? An initiative from INESS, a slovakian think tank, helps citizen to quickly get an approximation of…