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Recently, immigration and its socio-economic aspects have been in the centre of the European Union leaders' agenda. In this paper, we apply the National Transfer Accounts (NTA) methodology to calculate the complete set of NTA results for immigrants and natives in five EU countries. We find that due to the lower labour income, which cannot be offset by the lower consumption, immigrants experience a shorter independence period and a much lower aggregate life cycle surplus than natives. The identified cross country differences between immigrants and natives could be used as a proxy of the achieved level of integration of immigrants.

Although the investment-oriented development model for economic growth adopted by Chinese governments has generated spectacular results, the risks of debt-financed urbanisation and economic development have recently become evident in mounting local debts that are undermining the financial system, triggering concerns with respect to local governments' indebtedness, financial stability and sovereign risk in China. In this paper, we portray the uneven spatial and temporal dynamics of local government debt in China, and examine the ways in which it is intertwined with institutional, political and economic factors. Our analysis shows that while global and national economic conditions have resulted in a dramatic increase in local government debt, particularly in the late 2000s and the early 2010s, the spatial variation of local debt accumulation in China could be partly explained by two institutional factors: land finance and inter-jurisdictional competition. We argue that the behaviour of local governments may harm the long-term future of Chinese cities.

We show that measurable managerial characteristics have significant explanatory power for corporate financing decisions. First, managers who believe that their firm is undervalued view external financing as overpriced, especially equity financing. Such overconfident managers use less external finance and, conditional on accessing external capital, issue less equity than their peers. Second, CEOs who grew up during the Great Depression are averse to debt and lean excessively on internal finance. Third, CEOs with military experience pursue more aggressive policies, including heightened leverage. Complementary measures of CEO traits based on press portrayals confirm the results.

This article discusses briefly various aspects and forms of deficit financing in modern economies. It deals with deficit financing (i) within countries and (ii) between the member countries of the International Monetary Fund (IMF} and that institution as aid provider to a member in difficulty. In (i) it elaborates on the use of deficit financing as an instrument to part fund development, role in crisis management and inflationary consequences. In (ii) it briefly sees deficit financing on a global scale, explain IMF conditionality and the sort of programs it envisaged the aid seeking members to follow; it presents illustration and critique of the instrument each case.. In conclusion it contains some observations including a few policy suggestions.

This lecture focuses on the costs of public debt when safe interest rates are low. I develop four main arguments. First, I show that the current US situation, in which safe interest rates are expected to remain below growth rates for a long time, is more the historical norm than the exception. If the future is like the past, this implies that debt rollovers, that is the issuance of debt without a later increase in taxes, may well be feasible. Put bluntly, public debt may have no fiscal cost. Second, even in the absence of fiscal costs, public debt reduces capital accumulation, and may therefore have welfare costs. I show that welfare costs may be smaller than typically assumed. The reason is that the safe rate is the risk-adjusted rate of return to capital. If it is lower than the growth rate, it indicates that the risk-adjusted rate of return to capital is in fact low. The average risky rate however also plays a role. I show how both the average risky rate and the average safe rate determine welfare outcomes. Third, I look at the evidence on the average risky rate, i.e., the average marginal product of capital. While the measured rate of earnings has been and is still quite high, the evidence from asset markets suggests that the marginal product of capital may be lower, with the difference reflecting either mismeasurement of capital or rents. This matters for debt: the lower the marginal product, the lower the welfare cost of debt. Fourth, I discuss a number of arguments against high public debt, and in particular the existence of multiple equilibria where investors believe debt to be risky and, by requiring a risk premium, increase the fiscal burden and make debt effectively more risky. This is a very relevant argument, but it does not have straightforward implications for the appropriate level of debt. My purpose in the lecture is not to argue for more public debt, especially in the current political environment. It is to have a richer discussion of the costs of debt and of fiscal policy than is currently the case.

This paper studies the relationship between public debt expansion and economic growth and investigates whether the debt-growth relation varies with the level of indebtedness. We contribute theoretically by developing tests for threshold effects in the context of dynamic heterogeneous panel data models with cross-sectionally dependent errors. In the empirical application, using data on a sample of forty countries over the 1965–2010 period, we find no evidence for a universally applicable threshold effect in the relationship between public debt and economic growth. Regardless of the threshold, however, we find significant negative effects of public debt buildup on output growth.

The sustainability of public debt has gained renewed attention in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic, and recent geopolitical tensions. This paper investigates long-term debt sustainability in Eurozone countries that acceded post-2000 analyzing fiscal dynamics from 2000–2023. Using penalized spline regression in a semi-parametric time series framework, we evaluate fiscal dynamics while incorporating institutional determinants such as political stability and the absence of violence/terrorism and macroeconomic indicators like the unemployment rate (as a percentage of the total labor force). Our results show that Croatia, Latvia, Malta, and Slovenia have exhibited relatively sustainable debt policies, while other countries show weaker or statistically insignificant sustainability signals. Among the models tested, the one including political stability and the absence of violence/terrorism performed best, suggesting that institutional stability is a key determinant of fiscal sustainability. These findings emphasize the importance of integrating institutional dimensions into debt analysis and provide valuable insights for policymakers seeking to enhance fiscal resilience in the Eurozone’s newer member states.

Public expenditure on cultural services reflects a society’s dedication to preserving heritage, fostering creativity, and promoting social cohesion. Despite its importance, cultural spending often becomes a target for reductions during periods of fiscal stress or economic downturns as governments reallocate resources to perceived higher-priority areas. This study uses Eurostat data from European nations to examine the relationship between public expenditure on cultural services and government fiscal health. The article aims to assess whether cultural investment increases in times of fiscal surplus or suffers disproportionately during periods of high public debt and budgetary constraints. The econometric approach of this research is made by panel data regression, complemented by other statistical tests, studying the interlink between cultural spending and fiscal variables such as the general government balance sheet and debt-to-GDP ratios. Particular attention is paid to countries with high levels of public debt to assess whether or not cultural investment is deprioritized vis-à-vis other sectors. The study results indicate that cultural spending has been considered core, and governments prioritize it, even against the economic turmoil, for its more general contribution to social welfare and cultural capital. At the same time, cultural budgets might be inflexible in responding actively to macroeconomic conditions and reduce cultural investment’s potential to serve as an economic recovery instrument in times of recession. This paper provides broader evidence on fiscal policy and public investment that policymakers and other stakeholders can use to develop strategies that protect cultural funding, even during periods of economic uncertainty, for long-term societal benefits.

This paper examines the macroeconomic implications of sovereign risk in a model in which banks hold domestic government debt. News of a future sovereign default hampers financial intermediation. First, it tightens the funding constraints of banks, reducing their resources to finance firms (liquidity channel). Second, it generates a precautionary motive to deleverage (risk channel). I estimate the model using Italian data, finding that sovereign risk was recessionary and that the risk channel was sizable. I also use the model to measure the effects of subsidized long-term loans to banks. Precautionary motives at the height of the crisis imply that bank lending to firms responds little to these interventions.

The aim of this article is to provide the synthetic presentation of over twenty years of Poland’s experience in establishing and obeying the system of fiscal rules. This experience depicts the scale of problems entailed by public authorities’ low determination as regards observance of constraints imposed on them. Therefore, it is necessary to substantially reinforce the budgetary frameworks in Poland with the use of the best European models. Firstly, the ESA 2010 standards should be fully implemented into the Polish legal order. Secondly, the Polish system of fiscal rules should be complemented with the budget balance rule, which would make it easier to achieve and maintain a medium-term budgetary objective defined by the EU regulations. Thirdly, a fiscal institution should be established, which would allow for constant and independent of the government monitoring of the observance of fiscal rules. Such institutional changes would make it possible to constrain the discretionary nature of the fiscal policy and, consequently, would increase Poland’s fiscal sustainability in the medium and long term. The basic research methods used in this paper are dogmatic analysis and comparative legal analysis.