Fiscal policy in Europe: Taxation, debt and direct democracy with multiple jurisdictions

Fiscal policy in Europe is carried out in times of increased economic and political integration. Understanding the behavior and the role of states, sub-national governments, courts, companies and citizens in this integrated and interdependent environment is important in order to design optimal public policies and institutions. The field of public economics contributes to this task by analyzing how government policies affect the economy. This thesis adds to different strands of the public economics literature and consists of four self-contained chapters. The chapters' contributions cover the following topics: fiscal rules, tax competition, tax neutrality and the European Court of Justice, and spillovers in direct democracy. The fiscal policy challenges underlying all these topics originate from the existence of multiple governmental jurisdictions - either in a national or international context. In the chapters at hand, this gives rise to (1) bailout expectations of states within a federation, (2) tax competition between countries, (3) tax neutrality challenges across countries, and (4) interactions in direct democracy between municipalities