All of the attempts to end the euro crisis and to return the Eurozone countries to healthy growth rates of income and employment have failed. The options that are currently being discussed are not likely to be more successful

The paper considers the response of a small, open dependent economy to a variety of fiscal and financial shocks as well as the influence of alternative budget balancing rules on the response of the system to such external shocks as a change in the world interest rate. The approach allows for...

This paper examines three sources of the fluctuations in real interest rates during the past three decades: changes in budget deficits, changes in tax rules, and changes in monetary policy. The evidence indicates that budget deficits and monetary policy have had a strong influence on the level...

This paper emphasizes the importance of the interaction between tax rules and the management of monetary policy. The monetary authorities' failure to recognize the implications of the tax structure has caused them to underestimate just how expansionary monetary policy has been. Moreover, because...

We use a rational expectations framework to assess the implications of rising debt in an environment with a "fiscal limit." The fiscal limit is defined as the point where the government no longer has the ability to finance higher debt levels by increasing taxes, so either an adjustment to fiscal...

The 2007-2010 recession has imposed significant fiscal hardships on state and local governments. The result has been state deficits and the need to increase state taxes, cut spending, and withdraw funds from state rainy day accounts. The primary cause of state budget "gaps" has been the rise in...

We outline the case for supporting self-insurance by imposing a tax on external borrowing in a model of an emerging market. Entrepreneurs finance tangible investments via bank intermediation of foreign borrowing, exposing the economy to negative fire-sale externalities at times of deleveraging;...

The termination of a representative financial firm due to excessive leverage may lead to substantial bankruptcy costs. A government in the tradition of Ramsey (1927) may be inclined to provide transfers to the firm so as to prevent its liquidation and the associated deadweight costs. It is shown...

We show that financial sector bailouts and sovereign credit risk are intimately linked. A bailout benefits the economy by ameliorating the under-investment problem of the financial sector. However, increasing taxation of the non-financial sector to fund the bailout may be inefficient since it...

"We identify a new set of stylized facts on the 2008-2009 trade collapse that we hope can be used to shed light on the importance of demand and supply-side factors in explaining the fall in trade. In particular, we decompose the fall in international trade into product entry and exit, price...