Many OECD countries suffer from high sovereign debts. Sooner or later, this problem must be addressed. Many argue that this will require some form of fiscal retrenchment or institutional reform or a combination of the two. This column argues that the two are not complements as many suggest – they are instead substitutes.
Alberto Alesina, 12 November 2010
Many nations are in the middle of painful fiscal retrenchments. This column presents recent research on the impacts of these policies. It argues that spending cuts are less recessionary than tax increases when deficits are reduced and responds to criticisms of these findings in the recent IMF World Economic Outlook.
Most Read
Vox eBooks
Vox Talks
Events
-
18 - 20 July 2019 / Columbia University & Federal Reserve Bank of New York, NYC, USA / Central Bank Research Association (CEBRA)
-
17 - 18 August 2019 / Peking University, Beijing / Chinese University of Hong Kong – Tsinghua University Joint Research Center for Chinese Economy, the Institute for Emerging Market Studies at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, the Guanghua School of Management at Peking University, the Stanford Center on Global Poverty and Development at Stanford University, the School of Economics and Management at Tsinghua University, BREAD, NBER and CEPR
-
19 - 20 August 2019 / Vienna, Palais Coburg / WU Research Institute for Capital Markets (ISK)
-
29 - 30 August 2019 / Galatina, Italy /
-
4 - 5 September 2019 / Roma Eventi, Congress Center, Pontificia Università Gregoriana Piazza della Pilotta, 4, Rome, Italy / European Center of Sustainable Development , CIT University
