We wish to analyse the new rules in the European fiscal and monetary environment, and to investigate the effects of fiscal and monetary activism in Europe. The new European Central Bank has to decide on its monetary policy stance and we aim in this paper to contribute to the debate of the best...

This paper analyses two features of concern to policy-makers in the countries of the prospective European Monetary Union: The solvency of their governments finances; and the accuracy of fiscal forecasts.

In this paper we formalize budgetary stabilizers as a set of simple policy rules, and assess their operation in an uncertain environment by performing stochastic simulations in a forward-looking multi-country macroeconomic model, NiGEM, comprising individual blocks for 10 Euroland economies.