 The political economy of balanced budget amendmentsBusiness Review, 2013, issue Q1, 11-20 Abstract: A balanced budget amendment is a constitutional rule requiring that the government collect enough revenue to finance its expenditures every year. The motivation for introducing such a rule is the desire to restrict deficit spending and limit increases in government debt. However, policymakers strongly disagree about the rule?s coverage and provisions. In particular, they disagree on how to define the terms revenue and expenditures and under which conditions exceptions to the rule should be allowed. In this article, Marina Azzimonti provides an overview of the arguments raised by proponents and opponents to the balanced budget amendment, emphasizing its economic consequences. She then describes recent findings in the academic literature that analyze the impact of similar rules at the state level. Finally, she summarizes theoretical findings that aim to compute the impact of a balanced budget rule on economic and policy variables, together with its effects on consumers? welfare. Keywords: Debt - United States; Deficit financing; Budget - United States (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:fip:fedpbr:y:2013:i:q1:p:11-20 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from Access Statistics for this article Business Review is currently edited by Becca Sells More articles in Business Review from Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia Contact information at EDIRC. |
Is your work missing from RePEc? Here is how to contribute.
Questions or problems? Check the EconPapers FAQ or send mail to .
EconPapers is hosted by the
School of Business at Örebro University.