Fiscal Governance in Europe

Mark Hallerberg is Professor of Public Management and Political Economy at the Hertie School of Governance. He also maintains an affiliation with the Political Science department at Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia. He has published widely on fiscal governance, tax competition, exchange rate choice and European politics. He has held academic positions previously at Emory University, the University of Pittsburgh and the Georgia Institute of Technology. He has also served as a visiting scholar at the University of Amsterdam, the University of Bonn, the University of Mannheim and the University of Munich (all in economics departments). He has done consulting work for the Dutch Ministry of Finance, Ernst and Young, Poland, the European Central Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, and the World Bank. Rolf Rainer Strauch is Adviser in the Directorate General Economics at the European Central Bank, Frankfurt, Germany. He previously worked at the Deutsche Bundesbank. He has been a consultant to the OECD, the European Commission and the Dutch Ministry of Finance. He has also published widely in the area of public economics and European integration. Jürgen von Hagen is Professor of Economics at the University of Bonn, Germany. He previously taught at the University of Mannheim and at Indiana University, where he maintains an affiliation with the Kelley School of Business. Von Hagen is a Research Fellow of CEPR, London, and a member of the Academic Advisory Council of the Federal Minister of Economics and Technology in Germany and served as a member of the French Commite Economique de la Nation. He has been a consultant to the IMF, the World Bank, the Federal Reserve Board, the European Commission, the ECB and numerous governments in Europe and beyond. Von Hagen has published widely in the areas of macroeconomics and public economics.

• 1. Introduction; 2. Electoral and fiscal institutions and forms of fiscal governance; 3. An account of fiscal norms and rules in the European Union from 1985 to 2004; 4. How forms of fiscal governance affect fiscal performance; 5. Why do countries have different fiscal institutions?; 6. Institutional choice in new democracies: fiscal governance in Central and East European countries; 7. EMU and fiscal governance in Europe; 8. Conclusion.

Reviews of the hardback: 'Over the past several years, Mark Hallerberg, Rolf Strauch and Jürgen von Hagen have made path breaking contributions on the way fiscal institutions shape budgetary behaviour and on the interplay between fiscal policy and politics in Europe. … [This book] brings together and updates their theoretical and empirical research and provides new insights on fiscal governance in the European Union. As the financial crisis shakes the foundations of policy making in Europe and beyond, this book will help understand why countries' budgetary policies will react in different ways and how fiscal institutions may evolve as a response to new economic and policy challenges.' Marco Buti, Directorate-General for Economic and Financial Affairs, European Commission