The empirical literature using vector autoregressive models to assess the effects of fiscal policy shocks strongly disagrees on even the qualitative response of key macroeconomic variables to government spending and tax shocks. We provide new evidence for the U.S. over the period 1955-2006. We...

The empirical literature using vector autoregressive models to assess the effects of fiscal policy shocks strongly disagrees on even the qualitative response of key macroeconomic variables to government spending and tax shocks. We provide new evidence for the U.S. over the period 1955-2006. We...

So far, the 'new open economy macroeconomics' literature has primarly focused on monetary policy and monetary policy rules, rather than paying attention also to fiscal policy. This is an omission because, especially with the advent of EMU, the burden on fiscal policy as an instrument for...

Fiscal balances have deteriorated quickly in recent years, bringing back to the foreground the question what factors help explain such sharp changes. This paper takes a broad perspective at the issue regarding countries included, the range of explanatory variables tried, and the time-span. The...

The monetary integration of the acceding countries will proceed in several distinct steps, starting with membership in the European Union (EU), followed by participation in the so-called Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) II and ultimately entry into the euro area. This paper addresses the question...

This study analyses the link between fiscal frameworks and their budgetary impact. We look at different features of national numerical fiscal rules in combination with fiscal councils and medium-term budgeting frameworks. We construct our own time-varying dataset for national fiscal frameworks...

Should rational agents take into consideration government policy announcements? A skilled agent (an econometrician) could set up a model to combine the following two pieces of information in order to anticipate the future course of fiscal policy in real-time: (i) the ex-ante path of policy as...

In this paper we analyse the interaction of fiscal rules and fiscal space. We find strong evidence for fiscal rules being associated with higher fiscal space. Furthermore, the analysis shows that countries with more fiscal space tend to have higher discretionary expenditures, but that this...

We analyse the effectiveness of optimal simple and implementable monetary and fiscal policy rules in stabilising economic activity, inflation and government debt in face of an occasionally binding lower bound on the nominal interest rate in a New Keynesian model. We show that, within the...

We study optimal monetary and fiscal policy in a New Keynesian model where occasional declines in agents' confidence can give rise to persistent liquidity trap episodes. Unlike in the case of fundamental-driven liquidity traps, there is no straightforward recipe for mitigating the welfare costs...