This paper studies a model of equilibrium unemployment in which the ecacy of scal policy increases markedly in times of crises. A sudden rise in pessimism leads households to save rather than to spend, causing a fall in output and rising unemployment But as a persistent rise in unemployment...

We develop a medium-sized annual macroeconometric model of the Italian economy. The theoretical framework is the usual AS/AD model, where the demand side is specified along Keynesian lines, and the supply side adopts a standard neoclassical technology, with Harrod neutral technological progress....

This paper argues that the effectiveness of fiscal policy may increase markedly during periods of low nominal interest rates and high, persistent, unemployment. An increase in government spending boosts economic activity and reduces the unemployment rate both in the present and in the future. As...

The paper by Kawalec and Pytlarczyk (2012) (henceforth, K-P), and the shorter “European Solidarity Manifesto” (http://european-solidarity.eu/; henceforth, ESMA), address two different set of questions. (1) Should the Euro be dismantled? What is the origin of the Eurozone (EZ) depression? Is...

Creditors often share information about their customers' credit record. Besides helping them to spot bad risks, this informational exchange acts as a disciplinary device. If creditors are known to exchange data about defaults, borrowers must consider that default on a current lender would...

Data revisions and the availability of a longer sample offer the opportunity to reconsider the empirical findings that suggest that in the OECD countries national saving responds non-monotonically to fiscal policy. The paper confirms that the circumstance most likely to give rise to a...

We search for the circumstances in which the response of national saving to fiscal policy contradicts conventional Keynesian predictions, using data from 18 OECD countries. The data suggest that non-Keynesian effects tend to be associated with large and persistent fiscal impulses. Such responses...