The paper explores the determinants of yield differentials between sovereign bonds in the Euro area. There is a common trend in yield differentials, which is correlated with a measure of aggregate risk. In contrast, liquidity differentials display sizeable heterogeneity and no common factor. We...

In earlier work we documented two episodes in which a sharp fiscal consolidation was associated with a surprisingly large expansion in private domestic demand. In this paper we draw on further evidence to investigate if and when fiscal policy changes can have such non-Keynesian effects. In the...

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...

Several recent studies imply that the response of national saving to fiscal policy is non-monotonic. In this paper, we use two data sets to search for the circumstances in which such non-monotonic responses arise: one refers to a sample of OECD countries, as in previous studies, and one to a...

It is often claimed that the demand externality created by imperfectly competitive markets can provide an analytical basis for Keynesian fiscal policy prescriptions. Here this demand externality is embedded in a model where saving and employment are determined by optimizing choices in an...

According to conventional wisdom, a fiscal consolidation is likely to contract real aggregate demand. It has often been argued, however, that this conclusion is misleading as it neglects the role of expectations of future policy: if the fiscal consolidation is read by the private sector as a...

It is often argued that the EMS is an effective disciplinary device for inflation-prone countries in the EEC, since it forces policy-makers in these countries to pursue more restrictive monetary policies than they would otherwise. It is not clear, however, why these countries should submit...