This paper re-assesses findings of the literature that the systematic debt stabilising response in fiscal policy has been sufficiently strong for keeping debt ratios on a sustainable path in Euro area countries. In doing so, it adjusts the standard approach to the specific context of Economic...

We use an overlapping generations model to show that a bail-out is the optimal response to a fiscal crisis when the level of integration in a Monetary Union is high and the departure from Ricardian equivalence is significant. As it may not be optimal expost, the no bail-out rule is not credible...

Enforcement of European fiscal rules, to a large extent, hinges on the fiscal forecasts prepared by the European Commission (EC). The reliability of these forecasts has received little attention in the literature, despite the fact that i) the forecasts have potentially far-reaching consequences...

This paper provides optimal labor and dividend income taxation in a general equilibrium model with oligopolistic competition and endogenous firms' entry. In the long run the optimal dividend income tax corrects for inefficient entry. The dividend income tax depends on the form of competition and...

This paper evaluates the cyclicality, inertia and effect of EU accession on fiscal policy in Central and Eastern Europe using a real time dataset. Budget balances are found to react in a stabilising way to economic activity, and they are less inert than is typically found in Western Europe....

We investigate the effects of official fiscal data and creative accounting signals on interest rate spreads between bond yields in the European Union. Our model predicts that risk premia contained in government bond spreads should increase in both, the official fiscal position and the expected...

We provide empirical evidence on two, major war-related, regularities of U.S. fiscal policy. First, while during and around World War I there is a positive correlation between defense spending and civil non-defense spending, this correlation becomes negative during World War II. This may be...

This paper investigates the role of self-enforced national expenditure rules in limiting the expenditure bias and procyclical expenditure increases/decreases due to revenue windfalls/shortfalls. A simple model predicts that expenditure rules can have the intended effects, but only if the...

Using data for 17 OECD countries from 1983 to 2003, this paper establishes a non-linear relationship between private consumption and the level of government debt. In countries with a high level of government debt, a fiscal expansion is partly crowded out by a fall in private consumption. In...

We explore the international spillovers from fiscal policy shocks via trade in Europe. A fiscal expansion stimulates domestic activity, which leads to more foreign exports and, hence, higher foreign output. To quantify this, we combine a panel VAR model in government spending, net taxes and GDP...