The volume collects the essays presented at the 15th Workshop on Public Finance organised by Banca d'Italia in Perugia from 4 to 6 April 2013. The workshop focused on the link between fiscal policy and macroeconomic imbalances and comprised four sessions. The first session concentrated on the...

This paper proposes a signaling model of fiscal stabilizations that offers a new perspective on why governments deviate from optimal tax smoothing. In our model, dependable -but not fully credible- governments have an incentive to tighten the fiscal regime when the signaling effect on credit...

This paper reviews the main macroeconomic trends and the debate on policy priorities in Italy since the end of the Nineties. In the decade up to the outbreak of the global crisis (1998-2007), in Italy the reform process came to a virtual standstill; this is partly due to the fragmentation of the...