The large Public Sector Purchase Programme (PSPP) which the ECB started in 2015 on the basis of monetary policy purposes, had major side-effects on fiscal policy. One concerns the programme's uncommon seigniorage effects. We find that the PSPP not only led to partly negative seigniorage gains,...

EU Member countries have shown different degrees of ambition to reach a budget position of ?close to balance or in surplus'. Differences in ambition can only partly be explained by the relative size of cyclical safety mar­gins or differences in the number of votes in the ECOFIN Council. It is...

In this paper we empirically analyze the macroeconomic detenninants of insolvencies in Germany since 1970. It is shown that the growth rate of insolvencies can be explained by changes in the rate of return to capital and by preceding changes in the money market interest rate and the inflation...