We investigate the effect of fiscal institutions such as the strength of the finance minister in the budget process and deficits on interest spreads contained in bond yields of the countries now belonging to the Eurozone. Deficits significantly increase risk premia measured by relative swap...

Macroeconomic Policies of the Economic and Monetary Union: Theoretical Underpinnings and Challenges Philip Arestis and Malcolm Sawyer, The Levy Economics Institute and Leeds University Abstract This paper presents two issues: first, an effort to decipher the type of economic analysis and...

This paper describes the Federal Reserve's analytical framework under Volcker and Greenspan, as it was constructed in the early 1980s, during a period of high inflation. It traces the modeling and policy implications of this framework. It discusses the Fed's actual track record and the state of...

From the second quarter of 2009, global economic activity began to show signs of recovery after the recession caused by the subprime crisis. However, the optimism of late 2009 has given way to greater caution on the speed of the recovery, particularly in developed countries. This marks a second...

There is quite a bit of confusion in the policy circles, in the academic circles and also in the markets regarding the international economic situation unleashed by the 2007-2008 crisis. And, as there is so much confusion, the economic policy responses have been largely inconsistent, not only in...

While Keynes can be considered the true father of the “unorthodox” monetary policies introduced by the Bank of Japan and the Federal Reserve, these policies also provide the test of their efficacy that Keynes called for. They suggest that Keynes’s Treatise optimism was misplaced, and that...

Using an optimisation-based model with endogenous labour supply and a proportional tax rate, we compare the stabilising properties of different fiscal policy rules. The economy is affected by shocks from both government spending and technology. The fiscal policy rule can be based on government...

In this paper we introduce an application of the supply-side channel for fiscal policy to the basic New Keynesian model. We use a proportional tax rate instead of lump sum tax and introduce the distortions of a tax wedge. We derive a closed economy forward-looking model with government...

In this paper we consider inflation and government debt dynamics when monetary policy employs a global interest rate rule and private agents’ forecasts using adaptive learning. Because of the zero lower bound on interest rates, active interest rate rules are known to imply the existence of a...