SAT Words in Context Question

Mauricio Drelichman and Hans-Joachim Voth's analysis of the debt repayments and expenditure of the government of Philip II (who ruled an empire including Spain and Milan from 1556 to 1598) found a seeming contradiction: although the government had several short-term cash shortages, it ran an even larger surplus than did the government of eighteenth-century Britain, a nation considered of fiscal virtue. Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?