Budgetary policy plays an increasingly central role in modern economies. This volume explores different approaches to modelling this crucial area.

Specially selected from The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics 2nd edition, each article within this compendium covers the fundamental themes within the discipline and is written by a leading practitioner in the field. A handy reference tool.

A central proposition regarding effects of different mechanisms of fi-nancing public expenditures is that, under specific circumstances, it makes no difference to the level of aggregate demand if the government finances its outlays by debt or taxation. This so-called Ricardian equivalence states that, for a given expenditure path, substitution of debt for taxes does not affect private sector wealth and consumption. This paper provides a model illustrating the implications of Ricardian equivalence, surveys the litera-ture, considers effects of relaxing the basic assumptions, provides a frame-work to study implications of various extensions, and critically reviews recent empirical work on Ricardian equivalence.

This paper reviews the theoretical and empirical literature on the effectiveness of fiscal policy. The focus is on the size of fiscal multipliers, and on the possibility that multipliers can turn negative (i.e., that fiscal contractions can be expansionary). The paper concludes that fiscal multipliers are overwhelmingly positive but small. However, there is some evidence of negative fiscal multipliers.