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...

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...

This paper tests for long run effects of money on real expenditures in the U.S. over the 1959-2002 period. Real consumption and investment expenditures, as well as their broadly defined components, are examined. We also test for effects of money on long run reallocations of consumption...

The main aim of this article is to investigate the sources of non- neutrality in policy games involving one or more trade unions. We use a simple set up in order to clearly expose the basic mechanisms that also work in more complex frameworks. We show that there are common roots in the...

The main aim of this article is to investigate the sources of non- neutrality in policy games involving one or more trade unions. We use a simple set up in order to clearly expose the basic mechanisms that also work in more complex frameworks. We show that there are common roots in the...

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...