The paper addresses the question what effects the enlargement of a monetary union will have on necessary structural reforms in the (low distortion) member countries and the (high distortion) candidate countries. While monetary union lowers reforms in the candidate countries, members of the...

German policy during the Eurozone crisis supposedly follows an ordoliberal tradition. In this paper, we discuss to what extent this contention holds and to what extent Germany pragmatically responded to different crisis phenomena. A proper analysis of ordoliberal thinking reveals that the...

Major economic reforms have been carried through in Sweden during the last two decades. Most of the reforms have been made in response to long-standing rather than to acute problems. There has usually been a strong perception among economists, policy makers and the general public of the problems...

The on-going "Make in India" campaign aims at manufacturing revival. Its characteristics resemble East Asian industrial reform and growth policies based on the flying-geese model which highlights "step-by-step" changes in a country's specialisation pattern and global competitiveness accompanied...

Even before the onset of the 2008 global financial crisis and ongoing European debt crisis, much attention has been given to the re-emergence of the Asian giants, the People's Republic of China (PRC) and India. Both countries have attained unprecedented growth and economic development-PRC and...

Fiscal policy has become quite controversial in the post-Keynesian era, the debate over the Obama stimulus package being a contentious recent example. Some pundits go so far as to take the position that macroeconomic theory has failed to meaningfully progress in terms of providing useful...

Theory and evidence suggest that in an environment of well-anchored expectations, temporary news or shocks to economic variables, should not affect agents ́expectations of inflation in the long term. Our estimated structural VARs show that both long- and short-term inflation expectations are...

In this paper, we analyze coordination of macroeconomic stabilization policies within the EMU by focusing, in a dynamic set-up, on asymmetries, externalities, and the existence of a multi-country context. We study how coalitions among fiscal and monetary authorities are formed and what are their...

There have been widespread criticisms of EMU fiscal institutions. We consider a simple alternative to the deficit ceilings envisaged in the Stability and Growth Pact. We advocate the adoption of deficit targets. National governments should retain discretion in setting deviations from targets,...

The fiscal commons problem is one of the most prominent explanations of excessive spending and indebtedness in political economics. The more fragmented a government, the higher its spending, deficits and debt. In this paper we investigate to what extent this problem can be mitigated by different...