Schools brief | Fiscal multipliers

Where does the buck stop?

Fiscal stimulus, an idea championed by John Maynard Keynes, has gone in and out of fashion

AT THE height of the euro crisis, with government-bond yields soaring in several southern European countries and defaults looming, the European Central Bank and the healthier members of the currency club fended off disaster by offering bail-outs. But these came with conditions, most notably strict fiscal discipline, intended to put government finances back on a sustainable footing. Some economists argued that painful budget cuts were an unfortunate necessity. Others said that the cuts might well prove counterproductive, by lowering growth and therefore government revenues, leaving the affected countries even poorer and more indebted.

This article appeared in the Schools brief section of the print edition under the headline “Where does the buck stop?”

Cheating death: The science that can extend your lifespan

From the August 13th 2016 edition

Discover stories from this section and more in the list of contents

Explore the edition

More from Schools brief

The race is on to control the global supply chain for AI chips

The focus is no longer just on faster chips, but on more chips clustered together

AI firms will soon exhaust most of the internet’s data

Can they create more?


A short history of AI

In the first of six weekly briefs, we ask how AI overcame decades of underdelivering


Finding living planets

Life evolves on planets. And planets with life evolve

On the origin of “species”

The term, though widely used, is hard to define

Making your way in the world

An individual’s life story is a dance to the music of time