This article presents estimates of the financial costs incurred by Portugal with the Colonial War (1961-1974). The results obtained show that, on average, the extraordinary expenses most directly related with the war represented 22% of Portuguese state expenditure, equivalent to 3.1% of GDP. They also show that the total costs incurred by Portugal with the Colonial War amounted to between 21.8 billion euros and 29.8 billion euros, at today's prices and in the present-day currency. By estimating a dynamic model, it was also possible to identify a positive relationship between the extraordinary military expenditure on the defence and security of the overseas provinces—which included the budgetary costs of war—and Portuguese economic growth. The conclusions reached represent a valuable contribution to contemporary economic history.

The outbreak of the First World War had a strong impact on Latin American economies, due to the sharp interruption of the influx of capital and the deep disturbances that it caused in international trade. In the Argentine case, a notable aspect was, together with the increase in the fiscal deficit, the growing trade and payment balance surplus. Public indebtedness was reoriented towards the domestic market by the means of a state bank Banco de la Nación, and this institution also granted a large loan to the governments of England and France, to finance the export of cereals to those countries. This work seeks to contribute both to the debate on the financial impact of the war and postwar conflict in Argentina, as well as to the role of public banks to mitigate the ups and downs of the external sector and mitigate its effects on local actors.

Financial historians have devoted considerable attention to the investment behaviour of urban politicians in the market for public debt in the Low Countries. They have focused not only on how many urban officials invested in annuities, but also why they did so. On the one hand, it has been suggested that political elites often had political and economic motivations for investing in urban annuities. By contrast, historians from the institutional school defend the thesis that inclusive governance led to broader participation in the market for urban credit. A variable that has gone largely unnoticed in explaining investments by the political elite is the impact of the changing composition and social profile of the ruling elites on their investment behaviour. In this article, I examine the case of sixteenth-century Ghent to argue that changes in the city's power structure resulted in profound changes in attitudes towards public debt management. While the old political elite in the early sixteenth century prioritised selling annuities to individuals who belonged to the political networks of their time, the group of political newcomers that dominated urban politics at the end of the sixteenth century had much more of a market-oriented attitude, giving priority to non-political investors in the free market.

This paper offers a long-term comparative study of Bolivian public finances using a new detailed database. First, it shows that Bolivian government revenues and expenditures were particularly small and volatile until the 1980s. Second, it stresses that, whereas the relative importance of social expenditure has grown constantly since the late 1930s, public revenues have always had an unbalanced structure. Finally, it confirms that budget deficits have been constant, at times reaching levels that were especially damaging for the overall economy. This suggests that the potential redistributive impact of Bolivian public finances was not necessarily (or not only) hindered by the lack of an explicit commitment towards redistributive expenses, but by an extreme vulnerability in the revenue side.

The incoming Labour Government of 1997 promised a new approach to the conduct of fiscal policy. Two lessons to be learnt from previous experience were: (1) adjust for the cycle and build in a margin for uncertainty; (2) set stable fiscal rules and explain clearly fiscal policy. Although the claims for novelty were exaggerated there was a serious attempt to expand the supporting explanatory material at the time of the Budget and the Pre-Budget Report (which was itself an innovation). It started well, with the most significant tightening of fiscal policy occurring in 1997–8; but it ended with a record postwar deficit, a debt/GDP ratio heading for more than 75 per cent of GDP and the suspension of the fiscal rules. While the Treasury was not alone in failing to forecast the financial crisis and its consequences, doubts about the policy were being raised before 2007. Although the fiscal rules were met over the preceding period and projected to be met in future, a succession of current budget deficits and a tendency, from 2001 onwards, for over-optimism in fiscal projections left the UK less well equipped than it might have been to meet the challenges of the crisis.

This paper considers the effects of fiscal governance in Central and East European countries 1998–2008. The first part makes predictions about which form of fiscal governance fits which form of government. Under multi-party coalition governments, fiscal contracts where governments make political commitments to multi-annual fiscal plans work well. In countries where two political blocks face off against one another, delegation based around a strong finance ministry should be most effective. The second part examines electoral and party systems, which affect the form of government in place. The third part documents norms, rules, and institutions in place. The final section considers the joint effects of fiscal governance on fiscal outcomes. On balance, the underlying political climate is crucial for determining what types of fiscal norms, institutions, and rules function best. The more countries diverge from their expected form of fiscal governance, the greater the increase in a country's debt burden.

This article attempts to analyse the role that the Rothschild House played in the evolution of Spanish Public Finances along the 19th Century. Therefore, it endeavours to describe an elementary chronology of the relationships between the Spanish Government and the Rothschild House during the whole Century, analysing the main financial operations they underwrote, quantifying their annual aggregate figures and, finally, trying to comment upon the different consequences of the process above mentioned. To cover these aims, we have deployed original records from the Rothschild Archives in London and Paris, their contents having been supplemented with information from National Public Records in Spain and France, and other financial institutions, namely the Bank of Spain.