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Fiscal policy in Europe: the past and the future of EMU rules from the perspective of Musgrave and Buchanan

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  • André Sapir
  • Marco Buti

Abstract

During the ?Golden Age? that lasted until the mid-1970s, Europe witnessed a "public finance" phase, when the three sides of Musgrave?s triangle - allocative efficiency, redistribution and cyclical stabilisation - seemed to reinforce one another. EMU's fiscal rules - embodied in the Maastricht Treaty and the Stability and Growth Pact - can be regarded as the attempt by European governments to overcome the subsequent "public choice" phase à la Buchanan which was characterised by increasing budget deficits and trade offs between allocative efficiency and redistribution. The original Stability Pact delivered only partly. A rigorous enforcement of the reformed Pact will depend on two conditions: the renewed ownership of the rules by key players and the relative weight of the perceived negative externalities of fiscal misbehaviour versus the political costs of attempting to limit the partner countries? room for manoeuvre.
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  • André Sapir & Marco Buti, 2008. "Fiscal policy in Europe: the past and the future of EMU rules from the perspective of Musgrave and Buchanan," ULB Institutional Repository 2013/13420, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    • Handle: RePEc:ulb:ulbeco:2013/13420
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    1. Marco Buti & Paul Van Den Noord, 2004. "Fiscal Discretion and Elections in the Early Years of EMU," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 42(4), pages 737-756, November.
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    Cited by:

    1. Christian Fahrholz & Cezary Wójcik, 2012. "The Bail-Out! Positive Political Economics Of Greek-Type Crises In The Emu," Journal of International Commerce, Economics and Policy (JICEP), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 3(02), pages 1-18.
    2. Ferré, Montserrat, 2012. "The effects of uncertainty about countries’ compliance with the Stability and Growth Pact," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 34(5), pages 660-674.
    3. Jacopo Cimadomo, 2012. "Fiscal Policy in Real Time," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 114(2), pages 440-465, June.
    4. Staehr, Karsten, 2008. "Fiscal policies and business cycles in an enlarged euro area," Economic Systems, Elsevier, vol. 32(1), pages 46-69, March.

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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E6 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook
    • H3 - Public Economics - - Fiscal Policies and Behavior of Economic Agents
    • H6 - Public Economics - - National Budget, Deficit, and Debt

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