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. The members of the eurozone are supposedly constrained by the fiscal caps of the Stability and Growth Pact. Yet ever since …:•Governments' budget forecasts are biased in the optimistic direction, especially among the Eurozone countries, especially when they have …-optimistic during booms.•Despite the well-known tendency of eurozone members to exceed the 3% cap on budget deficits, often in …
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013102194
A popular view among economists, policymakers, and the media, is that the Maastricht Treaty and then Stability and Growth Pact have significantly impaired the ability of EU governments to conduct a stabilizing fiscal policy and to provide an adequate level of public infrastructure. In this...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013239944
The US Federal Reserve cut interest rates more vigorously in the recent recession than the European Central Bank did. By comparison with the Fed, the ECB followed a more measured course of action. We use an estimated dynamic general equilibrium model with financial frictions to show that...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012773305
This paper studies the optimal level of discretion in policymaking. We consider a fiscal policy model where the government has time-inconsistent preferences with a present-bias towards public spending. The government chooses a fiscal rule to trade off its desire to commit to not overspend...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013097776
Governments are present-biased toward spending. Fiscal rules are deficit limits that trade off commitment to not overspend and flexibility to react to shocks. We compare coordinated rules – chosen jointly by a group of countries – to uncoordinated rules. If governments' present bias is...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013017068
A European central banking institution will be an essential feature of the final stage of the European Economic and Monetary Union. The EC Committee of Central Bank Governors has recently produced a Draft Statute of the European System of Central Banks and of the European Central Bank. The draft...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013222223
Formation of the Euro area raises new questions about the coordination of monetary and fiscal policy. Using a New Neoclassical Synthesis (NNS) model, we show that a common monetary policy, responding to area-wide aggregates, has asymmetric effects on countries within the union, depending on...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013100660
The paper provides and empirical characterization of fiscal policy in the euro area and in a group of twenty-two OECD economies over the period from 1970 until 2007. Using the cyclically-adjusted fiscal balance we document that policy in the euro area has been mildly pro-cyclical. The adoption...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012757871
We consider the effect of excluding government investment from the deficit subject to the limits of the European Stability and Growth Pact. In the model we consider, residents of a given country discount future costs and benefits of government spending more than efficiency would dictate, because...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012759973
While the ECB helped mitigate the euro crisis in the aftermath of Lehman, it has stretched its monetary mandate and moved into fiscal territory. This text describes and summarizes the crucial role played by the ECB in the intervention spiral resulting from its bid to manage the crisis. It also...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012918640