In this paper we explore the impact of fiscal austerity on three different dimensions of public opinion (overall life satisfaction and confidence, attitude towards national authorities, and European institutions). Based on a panel of 26 EU countries, we find that, overall, fiscal consolidation...

This study examines reforms of public expenditure in industrialised countries over the past two decades. We distinguish ambitious and timid reformers and analyse in detail reform experiences in eight case studies of ambitious reform episodes. We find that ambitious reform countries reduce...

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...

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...

Do capital markets impose fiscal discipline on governments? We investigate the responses of fiscal variables to a change in the interest rate paid by governments on their debt in a panel of 14 European countries over four decades. This is done in the context of a panel vector autoregressive...

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...

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 order to assess the existence of expansionary fiscal consolidations in Europe, panel data models for private consumption are estimated for the EU15 countries, using annual data over the period 1970-2005. Three alternative approaches to determine fiscal episodes are used, and the level of...

We compute average mark-ups as a measure of market power throughout time and study their interaction with fiscal policy and macroeconomic variables in a VAR framework. From impulse-response functions the results, with annual data for a set of 14 OECD countries covering the period 1970-2007, show...

In this paper we explore the impact of fiscal austerity on three different dimensions of public opinion (overall life satisfaction and confidence, attitude towards national authorities, and European institutions). Based on a panel of 26 EU countries, we find that, overall, fiscal consolidation...