This paper explores how discretionary fiscal policies on the revenue side of the government budget have reacted to economic fluctuations in European Union countries. For this purpose, it uses data on legislated revenue changes and structural indicators provided twice per year by National Central...

In recent years, government revenues in many EU countries experienced significant and erratic changes, which, a priori, could not be fully explained by macroeconomic developments or by discretionary fiscal policy measures. We investigate this issue by estimating “unexplained” changes in tax...

We estimate the response of euro area sovereign bond yields to purchase operations under the ECB's Public Sector Purchase Programme (PSPP), using granular data on all PSPP-eligible securities at daily frequency. To avoid simultaneity bias in the estimated relationship between yields and purchase...

When enough agents do not participate in asset markets, the slope of the aggregate demand curve is reversed. Monetary policy should be passive, to ensure equilibrium determinacy and to minimize variations in output and inflation. This paper presents evidence that asset markets participation in...

The study looks at primary expenditure developments in the euro area, its three largest members and four “macro-imbalances” countries for the period 1999-2009. It compares actual expenditure trends with those that would have prevailed if countries had followed neutral policies based on...

This paper investigates the impact of ECB communication of its assessment of the economic outlook on ex-ante inflation uncertainty and sheds light on how central bank information shocks operate. The paper finds that ECB communication of new outlook information not only reduces professional...

We identify a novel dimension of monetary policy from high-frequency changes in asset prices around ECB policy events, orthogonal to surprises extracted from risk-free interest rates. We find that it is present in policy events that were interpreted by real-time market commentaries as containing...

Recent evidence on the effect of government spending shocks on consumption cannot be easily reconciled with existing optimizing business cycle models. We extend the standard New Keynesian model to allow for the presence of rule-of-thumb (non-Ricardian) consumers. We show how the interaction of...

This paper provides a study of bond yield differentials among EU eurobonds issued between 1991 and 2002. Interest differentials between bonds issued by EU countries and Germany or the USA contain risk premia which increase with the debt, deficit and debt-service ratio and depend positively on...

This paper surveys intergenerational altruism in neoclassical growth models. It first examines Barro's approach to intergenerational altruism, whereby successive generations are linked by recursive altruistic preferences. Individuals have an altruistic concern only for their children, who in...