Several European Union countries have recently implemented or are envisaging fiscal that operations improve budgetary figures but have no structural impact on government finances. This paper evaluates some of these measures using a balance sheet approach. In particular, it examines the degree to...

Do fiscal rules likely lead to fiscal adjustment, or do they encourage the use of ‘creative accounting’? This question is studied with a model in which fiscal rules are imposed on ‘measured’ fiscal variables, which can differ from ‘true’ variables because there is a margin for...

Harberger’s superneutrality conjecture contends that, although in theory the mix of direct and indirect taxes affects investment and growth, in practice growth effects of taxation are negligible. This paper provides evidence in support of this view by testing the predictions of endogenous...

In the past decades, much work has been geared toward solving the problem of time inconsistency in monetary policy and analyzing the coordination problem between fiscal and monetary policy. This paper provides a review of the theoretical background to these theories, while also focusing on their...

In recent decades, the foreign assets and liabilities of advanced economies have grown rapidly relative to GDP, with the increase in gross cross-holdings far exceeding changes in the size of net positions. Moreover, the portfolio equity and FDI categories have grown in importance relative to...

This paper examines the rationale for the imposition of fiscal rules as a way to reduce budgetary imbalances. It presents theoretical arguments for the existence of a “fiscal deficit bias” and the empirical evidence on the economic, political and institutional factors leading to this bias....