type="main" xml:lang="en" <title type="main">SUMMARY</title> </section> <title type="main">Fiscal policy in the EU
ARE OFFICIAL OUTPUT FORECASTS BIASED?</title> <p> We point out that official forecasts of output dynamics are crucial to the assessment of cyclically adjusted budget balances, and provide evidence that in some euro-area countries biased forecasts...</p>

"Numerical fiscal rules implemented at the national level in member countries of the European Union offer useful information on possible reasons for the growing reliance on such rules, and on their implication for fiscal policy. Our analysis of a survey-based dataset suggests that both the...

"Economic reform is sometimes seen as damaging to a government's re-election chances, but anecdotal evidence from OECD countries would not seem to strongly support this perception. This paper tests this hypothesis on a sample of 21 OECD countries over the period 1985-2003, controlling for other...