This paper empirically studies non-linearities in debt sustainability analysis by resorting to the modern estimation technique of panel smooth transition regression (PSTR). We assess euro area debt sustainability by analysing the reaction of the primary balance to changes in public debt,...

With this paper, our objective is to empirically study public debt sustainability by estimating a fiscal reaction function where the primary balance relative to GDP is assumed to be a function of the public debt to GDP ratio of the previous year and of other macroeconomic variables. In...

This paper empirically studies the role of financial development in the fiscal response function by distinguishing high and low financial development regimes based on a data driven selection mechanism and investigating two groups of economies, European Union (EU) members and OECD countries from...

We analyze the financing decisions of firms that face a labor market with search frictions and examine public policy choices that influence the firms' financing and liquidation choices. In our model, debt facilitates the process of creative destruction (i.e., the elimination of inefficient firms...

Assessing potential output and the output gap is essential for policy-making and fiscal surveillance. The European Commission proposes a production function methodology that involves the estimation of two classes of Gaussian state space models. This paper presents the R package RGAP which...

We develop a Fiscal Frontier which traces out the maximum government debt level that can be sustained at a given welfare cost. Through duality, the intertemporal policy mix underpinning the Frontier mirrors standard Ramsey policy and defines an upper limit on the welfare gains that can be...

This paper analyses the magnitude of automatic income and demand stabilization in EU Member States between 2011 to 2019. Our analysis finds that automatic income stabilization in 2019 averaged 41.3 percent at the EU level, with considerable variation among Member States. While the extent of...

The decline in safe real interest rates over the past three decades has reignited discussions on the neutral real interest rate, known as R*. We review insights from the literature on R*, addressing its determinants and estimation methods, as well as the factors influencing its decline and its...

Fiscal multipliers provide a way of quantifying the GDP gain for a given (discretionary) fiscal policy intervention. I compute government consumption multipliers for New Zealand, in normal times and when monetary policy is constrained at the effective lower bound, using an estimated...

Automatic stabilisers are fiscal policy's first line of defence in the face of adverse economic shocks. Automatic stabilisers capture fiscal policy's automatic countercyclical response to the state of the business cycle, and are determined by factors like the progressivity of the tax system, the...