Current developments in Greece make clear that the rules of the European Stability and Growth Pact (SGP) were neither strict enough nor enforced strictly enough. To deal with the ongoing exit from the fiscal crisis and its related phenomena, we propose a new framework for fiscal policy...

The further development of the European Community that has been decided at the Maastricht summit will be impossible to realize without a significant increase in the EC budget and an adjustment to the financing system. What will be the additional financing requirement? How could the Community's...

In June 1988 the Council, the European Parliament and the Commission concluded an “Interinstitutional Agreement on Budgetary Discipline and Improvement of the Budgetary Procedure”. A key element of the agreement is a commitment to medium-term financial planning for the Community for the...

The EC's budgetary problems are coming to a head. For 1983 virtually all the Community's resources have been utilized, and there are growing fears that the Community will soon have to declare itself bankrupt unless changes are made to current policy. What should be done to secure the financing...

We study the properties of the IMF-WEO estimates of real-time output gaps for countries in the euro area as well as the determinants of their revisions over 1994-2017. The analysis shows that staff typically saw economies as operating below their potential. In real time, output gaps tend to have...