The volume collects the essays presented at the 15th Workshop on Public Finance organised by Banca d'Italia in Perugia from 4 to 6 April 2013. The workshop focused on the link between fiscal policy and macroeconomic imbalances and comprised four sessions. The first session concentrated on the...

The Financial Crisis has hit particularly hard countries like Ireland or Spain. Procyclical fiscal policy has contributed to a boom-bust cycle that undermined fiscal positions and deepened current account deficits during the boom. We set up an RBC model of a small open economy, following Mendoza...

This article presents a detailed description of PESSOA - Portuguese Economy Structural Small Open Analytical model. PESSOA is a dynamic general equilibrium model that can be applied to any small economy integrated in a monetary union. The main theoretical reference behind its structure is...

We analyse Ricardian Equivalence in open economy using a panel of 18 developed countries for 1973-1998. We use a dynamic panel estimated via instrumental variables and we discuss why this specification should be preferred to a static model estimated via ordinary least squares. We find a...

Should the government run fiscal deficits in response to an adverse external shock that reduces national income permanently, warranting transfer of resources from production of non-traded to traded goods? This paper considers fiscal policy implications of sectoral adjustment costs in a model...

Using PESSOA, a small open economy DSGE model, we analyze the size of short-runfiscal multipliers associated with fiscal consolidation under two distinct alternative scenarios, viz "normal times" and "crisis times." The crisis times scenario embodies a higher share of hand-to-mouth households,...

The PIGS countries have suffered economic instability and fiscal havoc in the aftermath of the Financial Crisis. We argue this is the consequence of pursuing procyclical fiscal policies. We add a fiscal rule, which varies public spending with the cycle, to an otherwise standard RBC model of a...

This article focuses on the costs and benefits of a fiscal consolidation in a small euro area economy. The macroeconomic impacts and the welfare analysis are conducted in a New-Keynesian general equilibrium model with non-Ricardian agents. We define a benchmark fiscal consolidation strategy...

Central banks invest their foreign exchange reserves predominantly in government bonds. The global accumulation of reserves therefore affects the equilibrium in the market for government bonds of reserve currency countries. By means of a panel data analysis we examine the relationship between...

n this paper we analyze the role played by fiscal sustainability shocks on the Bolivian economic growth performance. To do this, we impose restrictions on a VAR for the Bolivian economy that allow us to identify fiscal sustainability shocks. We argue that imposing long run identification...