We use a Vector Auto Regression (VAR) analysis to explore the (spill-over) effects of fiscal policy shocks in Europe. To enhance comparability with the existing literature, we first analyse the effects of these shocks at the national level. Here, we employ identification based on Choleski...

Short-term fiscal indicators based on public accounts data are often used by European policy makers. They represent one of the main sources of publicly available intra-annual fiscal information. Nevertheless, these indicators have received limited attention from the academic literature analysing...

The paper proposes a theoretical analysis illustrating some key policy trade-offs involved in the implementation of a rules-based fiscal framework reminiscent of the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP). The analysis offers some insights on the current debate about the SGP. Specifically, greater...

Recent debate has focused on the introduction of a central stabilisation capacity as a completing element of the Economic and Monetary Union. Its main objective would be to contribute cushioning country-specific economic shocks, especially when national fiscal stabilisers are run down. There are...

We use a newly available dataset of euro area quarterly national accounts fiscal data and construct multivariate, state-space mixed-frequencies models for the government deficit, revenue and expenditure in order to assess its information content and its potential use for fiscal forecasting and...

The analysis of the macroeconomic impact of fiscal policies in the euro area has been traditionally limited by the absence of quarterly fiscal data. To overcome this problem, we provide two new databases in this paper. Firstly, we construct a quarterly database of euro area fiscal variables for...

Do public sector wages exert pressures on private sector wages, or has the private sector a leadership role in wage setting? This paper tries to isolate the pure signalling effect that one sector might exert on the other by controlling for other determinants of wages (prices, productivity,...

This study examines the business cycle behaviour of public consumption and its main components; the public wage bill (including compensation per employee and public employment) and intermediate consumption in the euro area aggregate, euro area countries and a group of selected non-euro area OECD...

Public deficit figures are subject to revisions, as most macroeconomic aggregates are. Nevertheless, in the case of Europe, the latter could be particularly worrisome given the role of fiscal data in the functioning of EU's multilateral surveillance rules. Adherence to such rules is judged upon...