Public finance and the recent evolution of the concept of fiscal discipline

Abstract

The aim of this essay is to highlight the currently dominant perspective of fiscal discipline in order to denaturalize this question treated dogmatically by mainstream. The design of the two institutional contexts in the recent history of world capitalism, according to the hegemonic conception of fiscal discipline, identify a first context of soft budget constraint and a second of hard budget constraint, revealing the historically dated character of this notion and its particularity in the current context.

Public finance; Fiscal discipline; Fiscal policy; Economics of the public sector; Rentier state