Balanced Budget Requirements and Debt Brakes Feasibility and Enforcement
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Werner Heun
Abstract
Balanced budget requirements should achieve fiscal sustainability, avoid a burden on future generations and allow for flexible reactions to cyclical fluctuations in the economy. There are many types of balanced budget requirements and debt limitations with different stringency. These budget restraints have a significant effect when they are applicable. The overall effect on public debt is small since there are many ways to circumvent or evade the restraints. Therefore budget restraints have substantial negative side effects. Public debt is transferred into less controllable budget areas, the structure of governments becomes fragmented and the balance of power is shifted away from the democratically accountable legislature.
© 2019 by Walter de Gruyter Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Editorial
- Fiscal Stability of High-Debt Nations under Volatile Economic Conditions
- Sovereign Default Risk and Banks in a Monetary Union
- Public Debt and Price Stability
- Public Debt in Post-1850 German Economic Thought vis-à-vis the Pre-1850 British Classical School
- Budget Rules and Fiscal Policy: Ten Lessons from Theory and Evidence
- Balanced Budget Requirements and Debt Brakes Feasibility and Enforcement
- On the Political Economy of Public Deficits and Debt
- Democracy, Elections and Government Budget Deficits
- The Politics of Public Debt: Neoliberalism, Capitalist Development and the Restructuring of the State
- It Is Private, Not Public Finances that Are Out of Whack
- Public and Private Debt: The Historical Record (1870–2010)
- What Is the Value of Sovereign Ratings?
Articles in the same Issue
- Editorial
- Fiscal Stability of High-Debt Nations under Volatile Economic Conditions
- Sovereign Default Risk and Banks in a Monetary Union
- Public Debt and Price Stability
- Public Debt in Post-1850 German Economic Thought vis-à-vis the Pre-1850 British Classical School
- Budget Rules and Fiscal Policy: Ten Lessons from Theory and Evidence
- Balanced Budget Requirements and Debt Brakes Feasibility and Enforcement
- On the Political Economy of Public Deficits and Debt
- Democracy, Elections and Government Budget Deficits
- The Politics of Public Debt: Neoliberalism, Capitalist Development and the Restructuring of the State
- It Is Private, Not Public Finances that Are Out of Whack
- Public and Private Debt: The Historical Record (1870–2010)
- What Is the Value of Sovereign Ratings?
