[From the introduction]. Institutional and ideological influences are not as important as they might seem at first glance. Seen from Bologna, there are good reasons to doubt the mainstream critique of European macroeconomic governance. Probably the most important is the bias in the conventional...

This paper discusses some of the recent developments in growth theory, doing so from the perspective of a small open economy. After setting out a basic generic model, we show how it may yield two of the key models that have played a prominent role in the recent literature, the endogenous growth...

The idea of a flat tax, a tax levied at a single rate, has become an increasingly discussed and implemented fiscal strategy across Europe and the rest of the world. Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania adopted flat tax systems in 1994 and 1995, making them the first modern countries to adopt flat...

Developing country fiscal policy outcomes documented in data point to stark differences compared with developed ones. Most prominent difference is the excessive volatility of government consumption and transfer payments and their positive correlation relative to output. This seemingly...

It is widely argued that Europe's unified monetary policy calls for international coordination at the fiscal level. We survey the issues involved with such coordination of fiscal policy as a demand management tool and we use a simple model to investigate the circumstances under which...

This paper argues that when EU member states joined EMU, this resulted in domestic institutional changes in the areas of fiscal policy-making and wage-setting. The paper argues that these changes were triggered by two facts: (i) in EMU, the monetary policy can no longer be used as an instrument...

[From the Introduction]. The main purpose of this paper is to consider whether fiscal policy according to EMU’s constraints is sustainable particularly in the context of high unemployment and low growth. In this respect, this paper is mainly based on previous studies which developed possible...

It is well known by now that population ageing threatens the sustainability of fiscal policies in many countries. Although a number of policy options are available to address the problem, the uncertainty surrounding the future development of the population complicates matters. This paper...

This paper investigates the rationales for fiscal rules in a monetary union, such as the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP), which has been adopted in the European Union (EU). Rationales for rules in fiscal policy have been found linked to the existence of externalities in a monetary union, which...