Setting the issue "Most economists consider the marked increase in automatic stabilizers a highly favorable development with respect to maintenance of economic stability." Besides the rare privilege of having being signed by both Milton Friedman and Paul Samuelson (Depres, Friedman, Hart, Samuelson, and Wallace 1950]), among others, this sentence expressed as soon as 1950 the consensus view on the stabilizing effect of fiscal rules governing tax revenue and public expendi- tures and transfers. This positive ex ante assessment will have been confirmed ex post as part of the explanation for...