Deficits and debt in industrialized democracies [electronic resource] / edited by Eisaku Ide and Gene Park.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Introduction / Gene Park and Eisaku Ide -- 2. The difficulty of fiscal consolidation in France / Anna Konishi and Frederic Tristram -- 3. Fiscal performance in Germany : the role of electoral competition / Achim Kemmerling and Zbigniew Truchlewski -- 4. Fiscal performance in Italy : a historical institutionalist approach / Benedicta Marzinotto -- 5. Explaining Japan's fiscal performance : why has it become an Outlier? / Masayuki Takahashi and Takaharu Shimada -- 6. Fiscal performance in South Korea (1970-2012) : budgetary reforms with growing non-budgetary indiscipline / Myung-Koo Kang -- 7. Fiscal performance in Sweden / Jonas Edlund and Morinao Iju -- 8. Long-run fiscal consolidations in the United States : the history at the federal level / W. Elliot Brownlee -- 9. Politics, fiscal performance, and external sources of budget discipline in the United States, 1970-2013 -- 10. Weaving the basket : elusive fiscal convergence in the European Union / Edward A. Fogarty -- 11. Conclusion / Eisaku Ide and Gene Park.