The paper discusses the stabilizing potential of fiscal policy in a dynamic general-equilibrium model of monetary union. We consider a small open economy inside the currency area. We analyze the demand and supply effects of direct taxation, indirect taxation and government spending and derive...

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 recent reform of the Stability and Growth Pact provides more leeway for EU governments to temporarily breach the 3% deficit limit if this facilitates the implementation of initially expensive reforms. But the implementation of this principle is not obvious as budgets would need to specify...

In the particular policy framework of a monetary union, the management of fiscal policy becomes an issue of special relevance, because the fiscal discipline imposed by the monetary agreements could limit the scope of stabilization fiscal policies, and its implications on economic growth. In this...

In this essay we study the optimal non-coordinated fiscal policy in a monetary union, where a common and independent monetary authority commits to optimally set the union-wide nominal interest rate. The national governments in the monetary union implement independent fiscal policies by choosing...

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act was intended to stimulate the U.S. economy and to create jobs. But at what cost? In this paper, we discuss the range of potential benefits and costs associated with counter-cyclical fiscal policy. Benefits and costs may be social, macroeconomic,...

This paper assesses the OECD’s projections for GDP growth and inflation during the global financial crisis and recovery, focussing on lessons that can be learned. The projections repeatedly over-estimated growth, failing to anticipate the extent of the slowdown and later the weak pace of the...

The global financial and European debt crises exposed the need for a new approach to fiscal modeling to support decision making analytically. With this purpose, in the following paper we present a macro-fiscal model. By capturing macro-fiscal interlinkages, especially those between fiscal...

This paper presents an alternative approach to understand the role of insurer in an economy with incomplete market. Based in a simple Stokey-Lucas framework. I construct a model with microstructure in the treasury bond markets with heterogenous bidders. The quantities and prices of the treasury...