The Economics of Budget Deficits (The International Library.

The Economics of Budget Deficits provides a comprehensive overview of the scholarly literature exploring the causes and consequences of deficit spending and the public debt. Incorporating classical, Keynesian and public choice analyses of debt-financed public expenditures, the two volumes contain major theoretical and empirical contributions to the debate. They cover such critical fiscal policy issues as the history and measurement of budget deficits, the question of who bears the burden of the public debt, the use of deficits to solve problems of dynamic policy inconsistency and the relative effectiveness of fiscal rules and constitutional constraints as mechanisms for achieving budget balance. The editors provide an authoritative introduction to the two volumes and separate overviews of each of the seven parts. The Economics of Budget Deficits is an indispensable reference for all scholars and students interested in fiscal policy and for all policymakers.

Edited by the late Charles K. Rowley, former General Director, The Locke Institute, Duncan Black Professor of Economics and Director, Program in Economics, Politics and the Law, James M. Buchanan Center for Political Economy, George Mason University, US, William F. Shughart II, J. Fish Smith Professor in Public Choice, Utah State University, US and the late Robert D. Tollison, formerly Professor of Economics, Clemson University, US