摘要：This paper uses the discussion within the Italian fiscal tradition on the supposed Ricardianequivalence between debt and taxation to give context to the Western Australian (WA)Government’s growing net debt from the late phase of the ‘millennium boom’. It issuggested that WA’s experience, in which growth in net debt has been driven significantlyby growth in general government expenses, accords best with Pareto’s main reason forrejecting Ricardian equivalence. The WA Government did have a strategy to maintainstructural fiscal balance over the long term, but the targets or rules associated with thatstrategy were abandoned and replaced by weaker rules. It is argued that, if those ruleswere more ‘constitutional’ in character, then the WA Government’s net debt would nothave blown out in the manner that it did.
