Absolutism and Fiscal Transparency in Eighteenth-Century Spain

Fiscal Transparency

It is widely believed that fiscal transparency has large and positive effects on fiscal performance. According to the IMF, “transparency in government operations is widely regarded as an important precondition for macroeconomic fiscal sustainability, good governance, and overall fiscal rectitude” (Kopits & Craig (1998, p. 1)). Indeed, both the IMF and the OECD are currently developing Codes of ...

Eighteenth-Century Europe

Chapter 6: Varieties of the Public Sphere To this point, we have encountered changes, as well as continuity, in European politics, economics, society, and thought. Each of these developments contributed to a transformation that some consider the most fundamental transformation of the century -the emergence, between the state sector and private economic sphere, of autonomous institutions of civi...

Eighteenth-Century Europe

Fiscal Transparency and Fiscal Policy Outcomes in Oecd Countries

It is widely believed and often argued that budget process transparency has large, positive effects on fiscal performance. However, the evidence linking transparency and fiscal policy outcomes is far from compelling. We modify the "debt as precommitment" model of Alesina and Tabellini (1990) by allowing for budget inertia and reputational costs. These modest changes produce an equilibrium level...

Medicine in Eighteenth-Century Bristol

The President introduced his remarks by a short survey of the social and economic conditions in Bristol in the middle of the eighteenth century, with acknowledgments to Latimer's Annals of Bristol in the eighteenth century, Munro Smith's History of the Bristol Royal Infirmary, and other sources. He quoted from English Social History: " Good doctoring rather than better social conditions was the...