Regional Budgets: Debt Reductions Amid Austerity

Fiscal Austerity during Debt Crises∗

This paper constructs a dynamic model of government borrowing and default. The government faces a fiscal constraint in that it cannot raise tax rates. By defaulting on the debt, the government can increase domestic consumption. Two types of default arise in this environment: fiscal defaults and aggregate defaults. Fiscal defaults occur because the government cannot service the debt due to its i...

Voluntary Debt Reductions

According to existing dynamic capital structure trade off theories equity holders never find it in their best interest to reduce debt voluntarily before bankruptcy or without renegotiating with creditors. This paper develops a model in which firms optimize the maturity structure of debt to commit to future downward restructurings. It is demonstrated that equityholders of firms with short-term d...

Clouds, photolysis and regional tropospheric ozone budgets

We use a three-dimensional chemical transport model to examine the shortwave radiative effects of clouds on the tropospheric ozone budget. In addition to looking at changes in global concentrations as previous studies have done, we examine changes in ozone chemical production and loss caused by clouds and how these vary in different parts of the troposphere. On a global scale, we find that clou...

Regional carbon budgets at synoptic timescales

Managing Healthcare Budgets in Times of Austerity: The Role of Program Budgeting and Marginal Analysis

Given limited resources, priority setting or choice making will remain a reality at all levels of publicly funded healthcare across countries for many years to come. The pressures may well be even more acute as the impact of the economic crisis of 2008 continues to play out but, even as economies begin to turn around, resources within healthcare will be limited, thus some form of rationing will...