When monitoring, interpreting and assessing budget policy decisions and developments, the public authorities' financial balance has always played a prominent role. The Maastricht Treaty on European Union and the provisions contained therein on budgetary criteria and reference values gave rise to...

In dieser Studie wird die kürzlich von Feldstein (1996) aufgeworfene Frage für die Bundesrepublik Deutschland empirisch untersucht: "If the true and fully anticipated rate of inflation has stabilized at a low level, i.e. two per cent, is the gain from reducing inflation to zero worth the...

This study empirically investigates for the case of Germany the following question, recently posed by Feldstein (1996): "lf the true and fully anticipated rate of inflation has stabilized at a low level, i.e. two per cent, is the gain from reducing inflation to zero worth the sacrifice in output...