In the current context where the limited role for monetary policy instruments apparently endows fiscal policy with higher effectiveness, European fiscal policy authorities are rather constrained by the fact of most countries being struggling against recessions together with the need to put...

The public finance constraints introduced by the Maastricht Treaty have been subject to numerous debates among economists. Balassone and Franco (2000) pointed out, for instance, that the fulfillment of these constraints allows for fiscal discipline and flexibility and excludes any bias from an...

Economic literature on the explanation of public deficits has been focusing on two main issues. On one hand, the accumulation of public debts in recent decades and, on the other hand, the large observed cross-countries differences on public deficits and debt. Economic arguments alone are not...

Over the last two decades there has been a growing interest in determining the impact of inequality on growth. The empirical literature has, however, produced controversial results regarding both the signal and the magnitude of such impact. This paper develops a meta-analysis on this literature...

A number of studies in the literature have recently explored the causes behind the European productivity slowdown from the mid-1990s onwards and the correlative increase in the productivity gap between Europe and the United States (e.g., van Ark et al, 2008; Maudos et al, 2008; van Ark and Inklaar,...

Setting targets to increase the levels of R&D, a component that is present in the political and economic agendas of the European Member States with the promotion of active tax policies, suggests that it is possible for R&D to cause an impact on economic growth. This research work aims at...

Foreign direct investment (FDI) influences the host country’s economic growth through the transfer of new technologies and know-how, formation of human resources, integration in global markets, increase of competition, and firms’ development and reorganization. Empirically, a variety of...

We propose a framework to solve dynamic nonlinear infinite-horizon models like those found in the standard economic growth literature. We employ a direct method to solve the underlying optimal control problem, something novel in the economic literature. Instead of deriving the necessary...

The phenomenon of population ageing and its influence on the economic growth of countries has long been the focus of major concern for both governments and the scientific community. Considering the scientific contributions that have been published on the matter in recent years, it seems timely...

Although a myriad of important theoretical and empirical contributions on ageing populations exist, these contributions are diffuse and lack an integrated vision of the distinct mechanisms through which ageing populations impact on economic growth. As such, in this paper we survey the literature...