There has been a rising academic debate on the sustainability of deficit spending and accumulated debt in governments across the globe. This correlates with a growing concern that excessive government deficits and accumulated debt will lead to unstable financial environments and a devalued quality of life for future generations. Varying economies with varying fiscal behavior have increased incentives to work toward more responsible fiscal behavior through reining in deficit spending and debt accumulation. We seek to understand the process these economies undertook, the procedures they used, and the resulting effectiveness of those procedures on achieving fiscal stability.

In light of the recent financial crisis, regulators and shareholders are pursuing more activism on firms' boards. The Securities and Exchange Commission for instance, recently issued proposals that include rules that would allow shareholders to include independent director nominees on a public company's proxy materials. This paper addresses the changes…

Policy makers continue to propose policies and regulations intended to prevent another financial crisis of the magnitude recently experienced. One major proposal is to establish another federal agency: The Consumer Financial Protection Agency to protect consumers from "bad" loan and credit products, just as the Consumer Products Safety Commission protects…

In this Mercatus On Policy, Mercatus Graduate Fellows Christina Forsberg and Stefanie Haeffele-Balch use the Government and Performance Results Act of 1993 to examine accountability and transparency issues in the Recovery Act.