Tessera

VoxEU @ CEPR

@voxeu.org

VoxEU – CEPR’s policy portal - promotes "research-based policy analysis and commentary by leading economists". VoxEU columns cover all fields of economics broadly defined and are widely read.

988 Posts6315 Follower 1315 Folgt

VoxEU @ CEPR @voxeu.org · 5d ago

How much does tariff confusion matter? In this #VoxTalks episode, Kalina Manova discusses new research showing that confusion about the tariff actually in place amplified the impact of tariff hikes on trade. Recorded at the PSE-CEPR Policy Forum. 🎧 Listen now: ow.ly/fKha50Zv6s9 #EconSky #Trade

VoxEU @ CEPR @voxeu.org · last wk.

How does economic power shape trade? In the latest #VoxTalks Economics, Alberto Martín discusses research based on 77,000 international treaties, examining how political alignment is linked to trade and why treaty signing has fallen sharply in recent years. 🎧 ow.ly/jsqP50ZumJU #EconSky #Trade

VoxEU @ CEPR @voxeu.org · last wk.

Y Berman & E Klor show that temporary tax holidays may generate substantial short-run revenues but also encourage taxpayers to postpone future distributions if they expect similar relief again. Policymakers should consider how policy shapes tomorrow's expectations. cepr.org/voxeu/column... #EconSky

Figure shows the top 1% income share in Israel. The top 1% share is total gross income of the top 1% divided by total reported income. The counterfactual adds back the dividend income estimated to have been retained because of the 2017 reform. The reform years 2011 and 2017 are excluded.

Governments increasingly look to capital income for both revenue and redistribution. This column compares two dividend tax reforms in Israel – a permanent rate increase and a temporary one-year cut – to examine how high-income taxpayers can adjust the timing and labelling of dividends in ways that undermine reform. Both produced immediate surges of more than 100% in reported dividends and tax revenue. But only the temporary reform left a lasting mark: payouts fell sharply once the relief expired, as firms retained earnings in anticipation of future cuts. Because undistributed profits are not recorded as personal income, the resulting rise in retained earnings also made top-income inequality appear to fall.

VoxEU @ CEPR @voxeu.org · last wk.

Alina Șandor, Shaun Da Costa, & Argyrios K. Pisiotis assess dynamic poverty in the EU and find that poverty is more widespread and persistent than annual rates alone suggest and experiences vary sharply across countries. cepr.org/voxeu/column... #EconSky

Figure shows poverty trajectories across EU member states from 2019-2022. Stacked bars show the share of the total population in each poverty-trajectory category over the 2019–2022 period. ‘Chronic poverty’ refers to being poor in all four years; ‘almost always in poverty’ to three out of four years; ‘entering poverty’ to being poor only in the final two years; ‘exiting poverty’ to being poor only in the first two years; ‘in-and-out poverty’ to alternating between years in poverty and out of poverty; and ‘transient poverty’ to being poor in exactly one year. Poverty is defined using the standard 60% of national median equivalised disposable income threshold. Countries are ordered by the share of chronic poverty.

Poverty is not a static condition but a dynamic process. Yet the at-risk-of-poverty rate, which underpins EU poverty monitoring, captures who is poor in a given year but says nothing about how long people have been poor. This column introduces complementary measures to assess dynamic poverty in the EU, which suggest that poverty is more widespread and persistent than annual rates alone suggest and experiences vary sharply across countries. Social protection systems differ markedly in their ability to reduce long-duration poverty. These findings have direct relevance for the EU’s newly adopted Anti-Poverty Strategy.

VoxEU @ CEPR @voxeu.org · last wk.

Barry Eichengreen, Maxime Menuet, & Gregory Donnat argue that debt-service costs are key to understanding when fiscal adjustments become necessary, and that they provide a more direct measure of fiscal pressure than debt ratios alone. cepr.org/voxeu/column... #EconSky

The figure reports the evolution of the U.S. federal debt-to-GDP ratio (solid blue line) and debt-service costs as a share of GDP (dashed red line) over the period 1800–2023. Debt-service costs are scaled by a factor of 25 for visualization purposes. Gray shaded areas correspond to major wartime periods. The vertical dashed line marks the year 1913, often associated with the emergence of the modern U.S. fiscal and monetary regime. Blue shaded areas highlight the post-World War II adjustment, the Volcker disinflation, and the post-2008 period.

Debt sustainability analysis typically focuses on debt stocks and the interest rate-growth rate differential, but these are not perfect predictors of fiscal stress. This column argues that debt-service costs are key to understanding when fiscal adjustments become necessary. Using long-run historical evidence, it shows that primary surpluses are more closely associated with debt-service costs than with debt ratios, and that fiscal responses intensify when financing conditions deteriorate. Overall, debt-service costs represent the immediate claim of public debt on government resources and therefore provide a more direct measure of fiscal pressure than debt ratios alone.

VoxEU @ CEPR @voxeu.org · last wk.

Bruno Caprettini, Alex Trew, & Hans-Joachim Voth turn to historical evidence to show that English labour shortages during the Napoleonic Wars created upward pressure on wages and led to massive productivity gains through the adoption of new machines. cepr.org/voxeu/column... #EconSky

Figure shows a strong positive association between recruitment intensity and wages.

As populations in rich countries age and fewer youngsters enter the labour force, employers and politicians bemoan labour ‘shortages’. This column turns to historical evidence to highlight why governments should learn to love labour shortages. Between 1792 and 1815, as Britain and France fought each other for global dominance, more than one out of every ten British men ended up in the army or navy, resulting in acute labour shortages and upward pressure on wages. The authors show how this labour scarcity and a skill abundance complemented each other in driving technology diffusion, boosting British productivity in the long run.

VoxEU @ CEPR @voxeu.org · last wk.

@stepanmikula.bsky.social & @fabiosabatini.bsky.social use nighttime lights as a proxy for economic activity to show that Ukrainian strikes on Russian industrial assets can generate economically meaningful and persistent local losses. cepr.org/voxeu/column... #EconSky

The figure shows that the estimated decline is largest in the smallest cumulative buffer and becomes progressively smaller as the measurement area expands. Since the larger buffers also include the areas closest to the refinery, this pattern indicates that the contraction is concentrated near the facility rather than uniformly spread across the full radius.

Measuring the local economic effects of Ukrainian long-range strikes on Russian oil refineries is difficult because reliable local data are scarce and both information and statistics are tightly controlled. This column uses nighttime lights as a proxy for economic activity to show that strikes on fixed industrial assets can generate economically meaningful and persistent local losses. They also illustrate how these losses can be measured when conventional data are unavailable, delayed, or difficult to verify independently.

VoxEU @ CEPR @voxeu.org · last wk.

Assaf Razin, who passed away in July 2026, had a distinguished career that spanned more than five decades. Gene M. Grossman & Elhanan Helpman highlight his influential research on international trade, the welfare state, migration, fiscal policy, and more. cepr.org/voxeu/column... #EconSky

During a distinguished career that spanned more than five decades, Assaf Razin, who passed away in July 2026, established himself as one of the leading international economists of his generation. This column describes how, across a range of topics including international trade, international finance, fiscal policy, taxation, migration, the welfare state, and financial crises, he combined theoretical innovation with an abiding concern for policy and for the ways in which globalisation expands national opportunities while constraining national choices.

Fabio Sabatini @fabiosabatini.bsky.social · 2w ago

What happens to Russia's local economy when Ukrainian drones strike oil refineries? In a new @voxeu.org column, @stepanmikula.bsky.social and I explain how we addressed this question by combining a manually verified record of Ukrainian strikes with satellite data on nighttime lights and fires. 1/4

After the fire: How Ukrainian strikes disrupt local economies around Russian refineries

Measuring the local economic effects of Ukrainian long-range strikes on Russian oil refineries is difficult because reliable local data are scarce and both information and statistics are tightly contr...

cepr.org

VoxEU @ CEPR @voxeu.org · 2w ago

Industrial policy is back on the agenda. Recorded at the PSE-CEPR Policy Forum in Paris, Tim Phillips speaks to Zsóka Kóczán about why governments are using it more, and the challenges of designing, evaluating and phasing out these policies. 🎧 Listen now: ow.ly/ok5050ZsnNv #EconSky #Policy

VoxEU @ CEPR @voxeu.org · 2w ago

In countries & states with career civil-service protections, the usual drag of populist governance largely vanishes. Without those institutional cushions, the economy takes a hit. What matters is that bureaucracy is professional & insulated. Massimo Morelli et al. cepr.org/voxeu/column... #EconSky

Figure: Event-study estimates for 2010–2023. Vertical bars show 90% and 95% confidence intervals. The sample contains eight switchers in states without civil-service reform and thirteen in states with reform.

Populist leaders increasingly cast public sector experts, oversight bodies, and career civil servants as illegitimate ‘elites’ standing in the way of the popular will. But bureaucratic institutions may protect the economy from the very disruptions that populists invite. This column examines the role of bureaucracy in mediating the negative effects of populist governments at the US state level. The results suggest that bureaucracy matters. In countries and states with career civil‐service protections, the usual drag of populist governance largely vanishes, but without those institutional cushions, the economy takes a hit. What matters is whether the bureaucracy is professional and insulated from political control.

VoxEU @ CEPR @voxeu.org · 2w ago

Damien Capelle et al. show that the binding constraint on completing the EU banking union is forming relationships and entering markets, not prices or quantities on existing loans, and these barriers correlate with regulatory difference. cepr.org/voxeu/column... #EconSky

Figure shows the average policy distance by country pair. The average bilateral policy distance is 25%: a typical pair of euro area countries still differs on roughly one in four regulatory variables, despite a decade of banking union reforms – the Single Supervisory Mechanism, the Single Resolution Mechanism, and partial harmonisation of deposit insurance.

Despite major institutional reforms, the European Banking Union remains incomplete. Banking markets remain fragmented along national lines, which constrains Europe’s growth potential. This column uses loan-level data from the European credit registry combined with the bank group structure dataset to quantify where the barriers to cross-border lending lie, what role cross-country regulatory differences play, and how much output Europe forgoes as a result. It finds that the binding constraints sit on the extensive margin, that is, forming relationships and entering markets, that they are closely related to regulatory fragmentation, and that lifting them may deliver sizeable economic gains.

VoxEU @ CEPR @voxeu.org · 2w ago

The EU is converging on a definition of economic security as reduced dependence. @kalemli-ozcan.bsky.social argues this is mistaken. The EU will only have economic security if it treats integration depth, not self-sufficiency, as the union's security variable. cepr.org/voxeu/column... #EconSky

Europe is converging on a definition of economic security as reduced dependence – de-risking, reshoring, buying European. This column argues that the definition is mistaken. Three decades of evidence on financial and production networks shows that resilience is a property of a node’s position in the network – the depth, diversity, and quality of its connections – not of the number of connections it has severed for self-sufficiency. Applying this test to critical input supply chains such as energy and defence – with Turkey, the EU’s largest customs union partner, as the defining case – the author argues that Europe passes the initiative’s ‘Singapore test’ only if it treats integration depth, rather than self-sufficiency, as the union’s security variable.

VoxEU @ CEPR @voxeu.org · 2w ago

Can reducing trade make conflict more likely? In the latest #VoxTalks, recorded at the PSE-CEPR Policy Forum, Isabelle Méjean discusses the "Safety Paradox", economic coercion, and why trade can act as insurance. 🎧 Listen now: ow.ly/wI5I50ZrqSK #EconSky #Trade #US #China #Europe

VoxEU @ CEPR @voxeu.org · 2w ago

Gyöngyi Lóránth, Anatoli Segura, & Jing Zeng argue that greater freedom to move capital and liquidity across borders in a European Banking Union should be accompanied by sufficiently strict supervision to address the risk-taking incentives created by such reforms. cepr.org/voxeu/column... #EconSky

European banking remains fragmented, leaving billions of euros inefficiently allocated. Reforms to establish a European deposit insurance system have been proposed to allow cross-border banking groups to operate more freely. This column argues that a common deposit insurance system fundamentally changes the link between risk-sharing and risk-taking. In addition to greater integration, it can encourage more risk-taking, with unclear effects on overall welfare. Therefore, greater freedom to move capital and liquidity across borders should be accompanied by sufficiently strict supervision to address the risk-taking incentives created by such reforms.

VoxEU @ CEPR @voxeu.org · 2w ago

I Delaporte, @veescudero.bsky.social, & H Liepmann present an ILO report that shows that socio-emotional and cognitive skills are in high demand and that employers seek rounded skills profiles. However, most countries still lack ambitious lifelong learning systems. cepr.org/voxeu/column... #EconSky

Figure: Panel A shows that integrated training programmes combining work-based learning with classroom-based instruction are more consistently associated with positive employment outcomes than stand-alone on-the-job training or internships. Panel B shows that programmes leading to recognised qualifications are, on average, more effective than those leading to certificates that are not quality-assured.

As digital, environmental, and demographic transformations reshape labour markets, skills influence who benefits from these changes and who falls behind. This column presents the findings of an International Labour Organization report that shows that socio-emotional and cognitive skills are in high demand and that employers seek rounded skills profiles. However, most countries still lack ambitious lifelong learning systems. The inclusiveness, quality, and adaptability of such systems will influence how economies and societies navigate structural transformation.

VoxEU @ CEPR @voxeu.org · 2w ago

Dennis Snower discusses two visions of building a new world order: Mark Carney's middle-power strategy, & Snower's own pivotal-power strategy. Both start from the same premise: the old order cannot simply be restored. But they differ in their diagnosis/implications. cepr.org/voxeu/column... #EconSky

As the postwar international order fragments and universal agreement becomes increasingly elusive, policymakers face a pressing question: what form of cooperation can replace the postwar hegemon-led, rules-based system? This column examines two complementary answers. Mark Carney argues that coalitions of middle powers can preserve stability, resilience, and strategic autonomy in an era of great-power rivalry. The author of this column proposes a broader architecture of pivotal power coalitions organised around human flourishing, policy alignment, and polycentric governance. Their dialogue illuminates one of the defining policy challenges of our time: how to combine geopolitical realism with effective collective action. Together, these approaches offer a practical roadmap for building a more resilient, cooperative, and problem-solving world order.

VoxEU @ CEPR @voxeu.org · 2w ago

Jonathan Hartley & Morris Kleiner show that occupational licensing is widespread around the world and is often more common in developing countries than in richer nations. Higher occupational licensing is associated with higher informal employment rates. cepr.org/voxeu/column... #EconSky

Figure shows GDP per capita vs. proportion of labour force with occupational licences across nations

Occupational licensing has attracted growing attention in advanced economies, yet little has been known about its prevalence outside the US. This column presents new evidence from 44 countries using nationally representative surveys. It shows that licensing is widespread around the world and, surprisingly, is often more common in developing economies than in richer nations. Higher occupational licensing is associated with lower per capita incomes and higher informal employment rates. These patterns suggest occupational licensing deserves greater attention as part of the broader debate over labour market regulation, informality, and economic development.

VoxEU @ CEPR @voxeu.org · 2w ago

If foreign investors stopped treated US safe assets as international liquidity, the exchange-rate consequences are present but modest: a permanent real depreciation of roughly 9%. Larger effects fall on US interest rates, which rise by around 90 basis points. cepr.org/voxeu/column... #EconSky

Figure shows how the convenience yield on public dollar safe assets has fallen. Measured relative to currency-hedged euro funding, the premium on Treasuries and agency debt has compressed from its 2022 peak towards zero.

The dollar's role as the world's reserve currency has been blamed for an overvalued exchange rate that hollows out US manufacturing. This column quantifies what would happen if foreign investors stopped treating US safe assets as international liquidity. In a calibrated two-country model, the exchange-rate consequences are present but modest – a permanent real depreciation of roughly 9% – while the larger effects fall on US interest rates, which rise by around 90 basis points, and on national wealth, where the lost seigniorage is worth close to one year of GDP. The recent decline in convenience yields and foreign ownership of US public debt suggests the transition may already be under way.

VoxEU @ CEPR @voxeu.org · 2w ago

Maximilian Herrmann, Jingke Pan, & @adreher.bsky.social show that oil price shocks change where violence happens by pulling organised conflict towards petroleum fields. Aggregate conflict statistics can look calm while the local map of violence changes. cepr.org/voxeu/column... #EconSky

The map shows, for each oil-bearing grid cell in the sample, the predicted decline in conflict probability had oil prices remained at their December 1998 level instead of rising to their July 2008 peak. Cells are grouped at cut-offs of 36% and 45%, the 25th and 75th percentiles of positive predicted effects: 938 cells show predicted declines of up to 36%, 1,874 cells between 36% and 45%, and 932 cells above 45%.

Oil price shocks do not simply make conflict more likely everywhere; they change where violence happens. Using monthly georeferenced data for 131 low- and middle-income countries from 1989 to 2021, this column shows that higher oil prices pull organised conflict towards petroleum fields, while protests and attacks rise around refineries and pipelines. Aggregate conflict statistics can therefore look calm while the local map of violence is being redrawn.

VoxEU @ CEPR @voxeu.org · 2w ago

Stephan Heblich et al. show that the USSR's Million-Rouble Plants programme in China created positive economic spillovers in the short & medium run, but specialisation & constrained local entrepreneurship = a decline in other local establishments in the long run. cepr.org/voxeu/column... #EconSky

Figure shows treated counties (red) and the group of control counties (blue) in China.

There is growing evidence that place-based industrial policies lead to positive economic effects. This column analyses the “Million-Rouble Plants” programme of the 1950s when the Soviet Union helped China build state-of-the-art industrial facilities. By tracking the locations that benefitted, it finds positive economic spillovers in the short and medium run. Although the Million-Rouble Plants themselves continued to thrive, the performance of other local establishments eventually declined, as increasing specialisation weakened knowledge spillovers and constrained local entrepreneurship. Policymakers may achieve more durable gains by fostering diversified local production structures that encourage knowledge spillovers, labour market resilience, and adaptation to technological and market shocks.

VoxEU @ CEPR @voxeu.org · 3w ago

It's another #VoxTalks episode! This week, Julia Cagé chats with Tim Phillips about a nationwide experiment exploring whether free access to quality #news and #media education can change teenagers' news consumption. 🎧 Listen: ow.ly/C9XN50ZoUUn 🔷 Recorded at the 2025 CEPR Paris Symposium #EconSky

VoxEU @ CEPR @voxeu.org · 3w ago

Thilo Nils Hendrik Albers et al. show that the pattern of regulatory cycles observed after the Great Depression has been much weaker since the Global Financial Crisis. Increasing financial integration has made effective banking regulation more difficult. cepr.org/voxeu/column... #EconSky

Figure: summarises the evolution of banking regulation over the past century. The left-hand panel shows structural regulation. The middle panel reports prudential regulation. The right-hand panel combines both dimensions into an aggregate index. It illustrates the classic regulatory cycle throughout much of the 20th century: regulation increased sharply after the Great Depression, gradually weakened during the era of financial liberalisation beginning in the 1970s, and then stabilised after 2008, without anything resembling the earlier regulatory backlash.

The regulatory cycles view, according to which periods of deregulation encourage greater risk-taking and credit booms, which culminate in financial crises and are followed by renewed regulation, rests largely on case studies of individual countries or particular crises. This column uses a new dataset covering 14 countries over the past century to show that the pattern observed after the Great Depression has been much weaker since the Global Financial Crisis. The authors argue that the reason is not simply a change in political priorities or regulatory philosophy. Increasing financial integration has made effective banking regulation at the national level progressively more difficult, shifting regulatory authority from national governments towards international coordination.

VoxEU @ CEPR @voxeu.org · 3w ago

CEPR President @wederdim.bsky.social argues that AI may unsettle the current order of economic research as thoroughly as globalisation unsettled the old one. She discusses the technical and geopolitical mechanisms at work in a new column for VoxEU. cepr.org/voxeu/column... #EconSky

Globalisation has changed economic research profoundly, making it more comparable, more competitive, and thoroughly quantitative. This column argues that AI may unsettle this new order as thoroughly as globalisation unsettled the old one and discusses the technical and geopolitical mechanisms at work. One prediction can be made with high confidence: someone who wakes up thirty years from now is likely to recognise economics as little as someone who fell asleep thirty years ago and just woke up today.

VoxEU @ CEPR @voxeu.org · 3w ago

Greater wage transparency is expected to narrow gender pay gaps with the new EU Pay Transparency Directive. Greatest gains are likely from where unequal pay among comparable workers is a key driver of the gap. S De Poli, S Maier, V Ivaškaitė-Tamošiūnė cepr.org/voxeu/column... #EconSky

Figure: The unadjusted and adjusted gender pay gap in the 27 EU member states. UGPG: Unadjusted gender pay gap (difference in average gross hourly wages between men and women, expressed as % of average men’s gross hourly wages). AGPG: Adjusted gender pay gap (difference in average gross hourly wages between men and women performing similar work, as % of average male average gross hourly wages).

Equal pay for equal work has been a core EU principle since 1957, yet women across Europe continue to earn less than men, even in very similar jobs. As EU countries begin implementing the new Pay Transparency Directive, greater wage transparency is expected to narrow these gaps. This column explores the potential effects on the 27 EU countries. Equal pay could substantially narrow gender disparities, but the gains are greater where unequal pay among comparable workers is a key driver of the gender pay gap.

VoxEU @ CEPR @voxeu.org · 3w ago

Are Net Zero Commitments #Greenwash? Simon Dietz discusses research on nearly 2,000 firms. Net zero commitments aren't linked to immediate emissions cuts, but are associated with an early shift in strategic climate management, often before they're announced. 🎧 ow.ly/pzx650ZobTO #EconSky #VoxTalks

VoxEU @ CEPR @voxeu.org · 3w ago

US labour productivity has accelerated since 2022. Although a natural conclusion would be that AI has raised production efficiency, S Boyle, J Fernald, & H Li show that it more intense use of labour and capital already in place that accounts for the acceleration. cepr.org/voxeu/column... #EconSky

Figure: Contributions to growth in US output per hour. Each bar is labelled by the calendar year(s) whose Q4-over-Q4 growth it contains — e.g., 2005–19 averages quarterly (log) growth from the beginning of 2005 to the end of 2019. 2025–26* is the average annual growth rate over the five quarters ending 2026Q1 (the latest data). Dashed line: average labour-productivity growth, 2023–26. Capital deepening is the contribution of capital relative to quality-adjusted hours; total factor productivity is measured as a residual.

VoxEU @ CEPR @voxeu.org · 3w ago

Alessandro Di Stefano, Yvan Lengwiler, & Kumar Rishabh present evidence that, following the UBS takeover of Credit Suisse, investors now see bail-in as less likely, a sign that its credibility has declined. cepr.org/voxeu/column... #EconSky

Figure shows weighted-average yield spreads over the ten-year sovereign benchmark for Credit Suisse's AT1, bail-in, and senior unsecured bonds in the months before the merger, announced on 19 March 2023. The bail-in and senior series are restricted to bonds with at most four years of remaining maturity to keep duration broadly comparable. Trading resumed on 20 March 2023.

When Credit Suisse failed in March 2023, Swiss authorities, against market expectations, set aside the resolution plan and arranged a UBS takeover backed by public guarantees, sparing the bail-in bondholders who were next in line to absorb losses. This column traces how that choice reshaped investor beliefs about bail-in across Europe. Spreads on bail-in debt narrowed, the funding penalty on weaker banks shrank, and yields moved less on earnings news. Each points the same way: investors now see bail-in as less likely, a sign that its credibility has declined.

VoxEU @ CEPR @voxeu.org · 3w ago

P Dubois argues Europe should procure innovative on-patent medicines through a single European negotiation that fixes one wholesale price for the Single Market, while reintroducing equity across member states through differentiated national contributions & side transfers. ow.ly/75hy50ZnFMM #EconSky

Europe pays for innovative medicines through 27 uncoordinated national negotiations, generating access delays, cross-country pricing externalities, and a weak position vis-à-vis both pharmaceutical firms and US trade and most-favoured nation pressure. This column argues that Europe should procure innovative on-patent medicines through a single European negotiation that fixes one wholesale price for the entire Single Market, while reintroducing equity across member states through differentiated national contributions and side transfers. Decoupling what the innovator receives from what each country pays would end the pathologies of external reference pricing and parallel trade, restore Europe's bargaining power, and guarantee simultaneous access for all European patients.

VoxEU @ CEPR @voxeu.org · 3w ago

Daniel Gros & Silvan Hofer argue that the central result of the EU's fiscal rules can be approximated by a simple formula: the required primary balance equals the largest debt-stabilising primary balance in a ten-year period plus roughly 1% of the debt ratio. cepr.org/voxeu/column... #EconSky

The EU's fiscal rules in force since 2024 are often criticised for their complexity. The official implementation requires thousands of lines of code and a sophisticated debt sustainability analysis. This column argues that the central result can be approximated by a remarkably simple formula: the required primary balance equals the largest debt-stabilising primary balance in a ten-year period plus roughly 1% of the debt ratio. While this simplification cannot replace the full calculations, it helps demystify the debt rules and provides a shortcut for assessing the impact of policies on debt sustainability.