Both the physical and transition-related impacts of climate change pose substantial macroeconomic risks. Yet, markets still lack credible estimates of how climate change will affect debt sustainability, sovereign creditworthiness and the public finances of major economies. We present a taxonomy for tracing the physical and transition impacts of climate change through to impacts on sovereign risk. We then apply the taxonomy to the UK’s potential transition to net zero. Meeting internationally agreed climate targets will require an unprecedented structural transformation of the global economy over the next two or three decades. The changing landscape of risks warrants new risk management and hedging strategies to contain climate risk and minimise the impact of asset stranding and asset devaluation. Yet, conditional on action being taken early, the opportunities from managing a net zero transition would substantially outweigh the costs.

Executive control of government is generally not a long-term job. In such cases, relatively short executive tenure should be expected to play an important role in determining the degree to which policymakers internalize the future costs associated with their current fiscal behavior. The effects of policymaker's expected planning horizons on macroeconomic outcomes, however, have been difficult to model outside of a fixed term limit context due to the unobserved likelihood of remaining in office, along with potential endogeneity problems where re-election campaigns can be enhanced with generous, deficit-financed expenditures in election years. From a globally representative sample of 79 countries over a 32-year period (1980–2012), this paper provides empirical evidence suggesting that incumbent governments who know that will not be in office in the following period with a probability of one, are found to generate significantly higher deficits in a linear discounting model, and are found to produce the least responsible fiscal outcomes where the likelihood of re-election is around fifty percent in quadratic discounting models.

Like in a number of other transition countries, the Croatian pension system comprises a traditional public pay-as-you-go scheme and a mandatory funded scheme (second pillar) that will provide increasing amounts of supplementary pensions to those entering retirement in the future. Due to the continuing economic crisis, the public scheme is currently under enormous financial strain, with a sizeable impact on central government finances. At the same time, the level of benefits deriving from the overall system is likely to become inadequately low in the long run. In this paper, we describe the existing system and project its future development under current rules. We also discuss options for further reforming the system and highlight their potential impact on pension finances, public budgets and retirement incomes, as this may provide lessons, which are of interest elsewhere.

Numerous archival documents show how the suspension of payments by Philip II, in September 1575, on the contracts with Genoese bankers (asientos) induced a freeze of the domestic credit market in Castile through the bankers’ intermediation for asientos and the credit interconnections. Commercial fairs stopped, banks failed and trade suffered while the king granted legal protection to the Genoese bankers. The evidence strikingly confirms that by his strategy, Philip II was able to remove the de facto ceiling on the domestic debt (juros) imposed by the fixed revenue commitment of the Castilian cities in the Cortes. The agreement with the bankers was signed in December 1577 immediately after the cities had agreed to the doubling of their commitment.

This article provides a historical overview of the factors leading up to debt crises and the default mechanisms used by governments to solve them, ranging from repudiation and restructuring to inflation tax and financial repression. The paper also analyses the Spanish governments’ graduation to responsible public debt management under democracy and the last debt crisis starting in 2010. After analysing the evolution of the outstanding public debt, budget deficits, the Spanish economy's ability to borrow, the central government's debt affordability and the profile of public debt, the article concludes that the Spanish case confirms the main hypotheses of concerning international debt crises: short-term borrowing enhanced the risk of a debt crisis; insolvency problems arose when governments were unwilling or unable to repay debt; debt crises took place after large capital inflows; most outright defaults ended up being partial defaults; public debt level became unsustainable when it rose above 60-90 per cent of GDP; default trough inflation became commonplace when fiat money displaced coinage; financial repression was used as a subtle type of debt restructuring; and defaults endangered the creditworthiness of the Spanish Finance Ministry and forced disciplined fiscal policies.

We assess the adequacy of saving in the United Kingdom from a macroeconomic perspective. We present conditions needed for wealth to grow in line with income and discuss the circumstances in which capital gains can represent a substitute for saving. We show that reference to balance sheets can be misleading because they fail to identify the cost of future consumption. A savings gap of between £16.5 bn and £66 bn is identified before taking account of the effects of demographic change. The outcome depends on whether one regards rising house prices as a consequence of fixed supplies of land or as the outcome of failing to invest enough in housing with the upper figure arising in the latter case. Policy measures to reduce the savings gap are discussed. These include appropriate use of fiscal policy and taxation of credit.