The cyclically adjusted budget balance (CAB) plays a key role in the EU fi scal surveillance framework. It started off in a supporting role in the shadow of the headline defi cit and, before long, turned into the linchpin of the rules of the Stability and Growth Pact. The steep ascent was driven...

The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, it presents a very concise way of measuring fiscal stance. This procedure is based on the assumption that the ‘neutral change’ in the government budget can best be simulated with a long-term approximation of the underlying trend of total output....

Wagner’s Law is the first model of public spending in the history of public finance. The aim of this article is to assess its empirical evidence in Italy for the period 1960-2008 at a disaggregated level, using a time-series approach. After a brief introduction, a survey of the economic...

In countries where the political-economy incentives that governments face do not foster prudent revenue management, national revenue funds (NRFs) should not be used to impose optimal expenditure paths. In such countries, NRFs should instead be used as policy tools for re-aligning the diverging...

In both developed and developing countries, there are basically two main sources of economic instability: exogenous shocks and inappropriate policies. Exogenous shock (terms-of-trade shocks, natural disasters and capital flow reversals) can throw an economy into disequilibrium and therefore...

The paper outlines the main current issues concerning Public Finance in Italy. It is divided in three parts. The first part discusses the overall budget policy. Italy is in need to support the recovery from economic crisis, however budget action is limited by European constraints. Different way...

The demographic database of Eurostat and of Us Census of Bureau are explored and the main facts are extracted and described. This paper is completely self-standing but is also part of a more general analysis dedicated to the functioning and sustainability of pay-as-you-go to finance the welfare...

Mid-long term projections of the Stability Programs (SP) are elaborated to simulate the burden each active citizen or each worker will have to bear for financing, via pay-as-you-go, public health care provisions and public pensions. It is worth mentioning that projections in the (SP) are those...

Empirical studies on the effects of fiscal adjustments apply different approaches to identify discretionary changes in fiscal policy. While the results of one strand of literature suggest that the effects of fiscal adjustments on GDP are small or even positive, particularly for spending cuts...

In this paper I use a medium scale open economy DSGE model developed by Baksa, Benk and Jakab (2010) for the Hungarian economy. This model provides a notable degree of disaggregation both on the government revenue and expenditure side, being able to capture the shocks that come from fiscal...