A simple model illustrates interactions between the 'primary' fiscal deficit (total deficit minus interest payments), economic growth and debt. The deficit/income ratio responds countercyclically to growth while growth may respond positively (a 'Keynes' case) or negatively (à la 'Merkel') to...

This paper studies the dynamics of macroeconomic risk, fiscal policy and the macroeconomy in a two-country monetary union framework, under the assumption that agents do not have rational expectations, but use heuristics to determine their consumption over time, as well as to assess macroeconomic...

The dichotomous characterization of the business cycle in recessions and expansions has been central in the literature over the last fifty years. However, there are various reasons to question the adequacy of this dichotomous approach for our understanding of business cycle dynamics, as well as...

Against the background of the recent housing boom and bust in countries such as Spain and Ireland, we investigate in this paper the macroeconomic consequences of cross-border banking in monetary unions such as the euro area. For this purpose, we incorporate in an otherwise standard two-region...

The recent financial and sovereign debt crises around the world have sparked a growing literature on models and empirical estimates of defaultable debt. Frequently households and firms come under default threat, local governments can default, and recently sovereign default threats were eminent...

This paper investigates the design of optimal monetary policy in a currency union with asymmetric national labor markets. For this purpose a stylized theoretical two-country model is introduced where the occurrence of inflation differentials is a reflection of asymmetries in the labor market...

A growing body of literature argues that the financial cycle is considerably longer in duration and larger in amplitude than the business cycle and that its distinguishing features became more pronounced over time. This paper proposes an empirical approach suitable to test these hypothe- ses. We...

Are financial cycles an international phenomenon, and, if so, how do financial cycles interact? This letter provides new evidence for the US and the UK. Considering the properties of the data in both the time and the frequency domains, we find a strong relation between the financial cycles of...

Forecasting business-cycle turning points under real-time conditions One of the greatest challenges in business cycle research is the timely and reliable identification of cyclical turning points.The data availability in real time constitutes a fundamental problem:First there is a publication...