The standard way today to obtain measures of inflationary expectations is to use questionnaires to ask a representative group of respondents about their beliefs of the future rate of inflation during the coming 12 months. This type of data on inflationary expectations as well as on inflationary...

While current instruments of EU economic policy coordination helped stave off a full-scale depression, the post-2007 global financial and economic crisis has revealed a number of weaknesses in the Stability and Growth Pact, the EU framework for fiscal surveillance and fiscal policy coordination....

This paper analyses the evolution of public support for the single European currency, the euro, from 1990 to 2011, focusing on the most recent period of financial and sovereign debt crisis. Exploring a huge database of more than half a million observations covering the 12 original euro area...

This paper explores the evolution of Swedish fiscal policy from one extreme approach to another one in less than four decades. After the demise of the Bretton Woods-system in the early 1970s, Swedish fiscal policy was based on a Keynesian approach with the goal to stabilize the business cycle...

This paper derives a set of policy lessons for Portugal from the new fiscal framework including a fiscal policy council that gradually emerged in Sweden after the deep economic crisis of the early 1990s. By now, Swedish public finances stand out among the strongest in Europe. Recent Swedish...

We assess Lars E O Svensson's prominent critique of the Swedish Riksbank. We reject his two major claims: first that the Riksbank has anchored inflation expectations at the 2 percent inflation target, and second, that the original version of the Phillips curve, based constant inflation...

This paper presents an independent evaluation of the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council (IFAC) carried out in 2015. IFAC was set up as an independent fiscal institution in 2011 to monitor the fiscal policy of the Irish government. Similar fiscal "watchdogs" have emerged across Europe following the...

Should an inflation-targeting central bank have an explicit tolerance band around its inflation target? This paper provides an answer derived from the Swedish experience. The Riksbank is exceptional in the sense that it first adopted and later abolished an explicit band and is currently...

This paper explores the evolution and determinants of public support for the euro since its creation in 1999 until the end of 2017, thereby covering the pre-crisis experience of the euro, the crisis years and the recent recovery. Using uniquely large macro and micro databases and applying...

The purpose of this report is to derive lessons from inflation targeting in Sweden for the choice of the future monetary policy regime of Iceland. Swedish inflation targeting has been a success in terms of reducing inflation and inflation volatility, but real economic volatility is not lower...