The paper analyses theoretically what role fiscal councils could play and surveys empirically the activities of existing councils. Case studies of the Swedish Fiscal Policy Council and the UK Office for Budget Responsibility are done. It is concluded that fiscal councils should be advisory,...

This study assesses the short and long-run behaviour of long-term sovereign bond yields in OECD countries, for the period 1973-2008. We employ a dynamic panel approach to reflect financial and economic integration, and to increase the performance and accuracy of the tests. Given the existence of...

In this paper, we evaluate the first-stage pass-through, namely the responsiveness of import prices to the exchange rate changes, for a sample of euro area (EA) countries. Our study aims to shed further light on the role of microeconomic factors vs. macroeconomic factors in influencing the...

This paper investigates the role of unconventional monetary policy as a source of time-variation in the relationship between sovereign bond yield spreads and their fundamental determinants. Our results provide evidence of a new bond-pricing regime following the announcement of the Outright...