This paper discusses how the technical foundations of the EU’s fiscal rules constrain the fiscal space in EU countries in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. We review the evidence on how estimates of potential output, which are at the heart of essential control indicators in EU fiscal...

This paper analyses the cyclicality of fiscal policy (discretionary versus automatic) for 28 advanced economies over 1995-2021 by paying special attention to the Covid-19 crisis. We find evidence that discretionary fiscal policy during the Covid-19 crisis (2020-2021) was significantly more...

This paper analyses the link between discretionary fiscal policy and interest-growth differentials (r-g). Panel regressions based on a dataset for 20 advanced countries over the years 1990-2019 reveal no evidence of a systematic linear relationship between fiscal policy and r-g. However, more...

Spending elasticities measure the reaction of different government spending components to the business cycle. They are important inputs for fiscal forecasts, and they are particularly relevant in the context of European Union (EU) fiscal rules, as elasticity estimates enter the estimation of...