This paper deals with the fiscal behaviour of governments in the 1920s and 1930s. The intention is to see whether there were the same features in government behaviour as in the post-World War II era. In par-ticular, attention is paid to asymmetric fiscal policies, ie the question of whether...

Shocks to monetary and fiscal policy have played a major role in public debt developments in the OECD countries since the mid-1970s. According to the applied VAR approach, these shocks, taken together, explained, on average, about half of the forecast error variation in the debt to GDP ratio,...

The paper concentrates on illustrating and assessing central banks’ liquidity operations during the crisis that started in August 2007. In addition to the ECB, the central banks of Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Australia, Japan, Canada and the United States are analyzed. During the...

Using real time data from the OECD and fiscal policy reaction functions, this study explores euro area fiscal policies since the late 1990s. Both discretionary plans for the budget year and policy changes during budget implementation stages are investigated. The main focus is on the fiscal...

This study explores real time uncertainty in euro area fiscal policies since the late 1990s. Using real time data from the OECD Economic Outlook publications we investigate the impact of real time uncertainty on fiscal planning and debt accumulation separately for two country groups in the euro...

This paper provides some further tests for the proposition that a larger public sector leads to smaller out-put volatility. Both Gali and Fatas & Mihov have provided some evidence which appears to support this proposition. Their evidence is, however, based on a relatively small sample of...

How do cyclical fiscal stabilisation policies affect welfare and government bond risk premia? Using a new Keynesian model we find that the effects of fiscal policy rules on the bond premium and welfare crucially depend on the source of business cycle fluctuations. The overall effect is estimated...

This study explores discretionary fiscal policies in the euro area during the time of monetary union (EMU). Ex ante budget plans and policy changes during budget implementation are investigated using real time data from the OECD Economic Outlook publications. The particular focus of the study is...

The framework for fiscal policy coordination in EMU has been in effect for three years. The experience gained shows that the rule-based approach provides in principle a feasible solution for policy coordination among a large number of heterogeneous countries whose joint interest is to safeguard...