Many economists are convinced that longer-term benefits from fiscal consolidation are in a trade-off with short-term deceleration in output growth. However, more recent research suggests that curbing fiscal imbalances contributes to faster growth already in the short term. This paper is about...

In this paper, we examine the macroeconomic effects of alternative fiscal consolidation policies in the New Area-Wide Model (NAWM), a two-country open-economy model of the euro area developed at the European Central Bank (cf. Coenen et al., 2007). We model fiscal consolidation as a permanent...

Based on a rich database of government bond spreads and macroeconomic indicators over the period 2001-2008, we propose an empirical assessment of the role of fundamentals in driving long-term sovereign bond spreads of the new EU countries (Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary,...

We investigate the impact of fiscal variables on bond yield spreads relative to US Treasury bonds in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Russia and Turkey from May 1998 to December 2007. To account for the importance of market expectations we use projected values for fiscal and macroeconomic...

This paper uses a dynamic panel approach to explain the determinants of widening sovereign bond yield spreads vis-à-vis Germany in selected euro area countries during the period end-July 2007 to end-March 2009, when the financial turmoil developed into a full-blown financial and economic...

This note looks at US$ and DM/Euro denominated government bond spreads relative to US and German benchmark bonds before and after the start of the current financial crisis. The study finds, first, that bond yield spreads before and during the crisis can largely be explained on the basis of...

We use realised variances and co-variances based on intraday data from Eurozone sovereign bond market to measure the dependence structure of eurozone sovereign yields. Our analysis focuses on the impact of news, obtained from the Eurointelligence newsflash, on the dependence structure. More news...

This paper studies the effects of fiscal consolidation on the debt-to-GDP ratio of 11 Euro area countries. Using a quarterly fiscal Panel VAR allows us to trace out the dynamics of the debt-to-GDP ratio following a fiscal shock and to disentangle the main channels through which fiscal...

Identifying fiscal multipliers is usually constrained by the absence of a counterfactual scenario. Our new data set allows overcoming this problem by making use of the fact that recommendations under the EU's excessive deficit procedure (EDP) provide both a baseline no-policy-change scenario and...

We study fiscal behaviour and the sovereign yield curve in the U.S. and Germany in the period 1981:I-2009:IV. The latent factors, level, slope and curvature, obtained with the Kalman filter, are used in a VAR with macro and fiscal variables, controlling for financial stress conditions. In the...