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...

Rainy Day Funds (RDFs) have an important role in the USA. They allow States � which usually have rules requiring a balanced budget for current revenue and spending � to limit procyclical fiscal policies. This paper examines the possible role of RDFs in the European fiscal framework....

The reliability of EMU�s fiscal indicators has been questioned by recent episodes of large upward deficit revisions. This paper discusses the causes of such revisions in order to identify ways to improve monitoring. The computation of EMU�s deficit indicator involves the assessment of...

The volume collects the essays presented at the 12th Workshop on Public Finance organised by Banca d'Italia in Perugia on 25-27 March 2010. The workshop focused on the implications for fiscal policy analysis of the 2008-09 recession, the most severe at global level since the Great Depression....

The volume collects the essays presented at the 14th Workshop on Public Finance organised by Banca d'Italia in Perugia from 29 to 31 March 2012. The workshop focused on the interaction between fiscal policy and growth and was organised in four sessions. The first session dealt with the...

We examine the impact of four factors on the fiscal policies of the euro-area countries over the last two decades: the state of public finances, the European fiscal rules, cyclical conditions and general elections. We rely on information actually available to policy-makers at the time of...

In this paper we present a stylised framework of fiscal policy determination that considers both structural targets and cyclical factors. Applying this framework to a sample of 16 OECD countries, we find evidence of significant asymmetry in the reaction of fiscal policy to positive and negative...