The Lisbon Strategy supports reform of Member States' tax-benefit systems while the 'fiscal philosophy' of the EMU postulates that governments should allow only automatic stabilizers, built into tax-benefit systems, to smooth aggregate income. We ask whether these two pillars of EU economic...

The fiscal policy framework of EMU and possible reforms of the Stability and Growth Pact have elicited much debate. The pact has been predicated on a conception of it as a device to discipline Member States. This gives rise to a paradox in which the credibility of policy-makers it is supposed to...

This special issue asks commentators who made seminal contributions to our understanding of economic governance to revisit their analyses. This introductory article discusses the example of a major contribution, namely the 'advantage of tying one's hands' (Giavazzi and Pagano, 1988), relating it...