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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/10012468923
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/10012467632
This paper begins by discussing the inherent conflict between the simultaneous existence of a single currency for the countries of the European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) and the independent fiscal policies of those countries. The Stability and Growth Pact was an attempt to reconcile that...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012467436
Government forecasts of GDP growth and budget balances are generally more over-optimistic than private sector forecasts. When official forecasts are especially optimistic relative to private forecasts ex ante, they are more likely also to be over-optimistic relative to realizations ex post. For...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012456327
The possibility that the euro area might break up was being raised even before the single currency existed. These scenarios were then lent new life five or six years on, when appreciation of the euro and problems of slow growth in various member states led politicians to blame the European...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012465257
The aging of the population shakes the confidence in the economic viability of pay-as-you-go social security systems. We demonstrate how in a political-economy framework the shaken cofidence leads to the downsizing of the social security-system, and to the emergence of supplemental individual...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012469430
This paper examines the sources of current conflict within the EU and the EMU. The topics discussed include the recent ECB policy of bond buying (the OMT policy), the attempts to advance the "European Project" of stronger political union (the fiscal compact, the banking union, and the proposals...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012459989
. The members of the eurozone are supposedly constrained by the fiscal caps of the Stability and Growth Pact. Yet ever since …•Despite the well-known tendency of eurozone members to exceed the 3% cap on budget deficits, often in consecutive … among eurozone forecasts. If euro area governments are not in violation of the 3% cap at the time forecasts are made …
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012460377
The recent financial crisis 2007-2009 was the longest and the deepest recession since the Great Depression of 1930. The crisis that originated in subprime mortgage markets was spread and amplified through globalised financial markets and resulted in severe debt crises in several European...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012461278
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/10012463925