Recent developments in macroeconomics and macroeconomic policy, what has come to be known as “New Consensus in Macroeconomics”, downgrades the role of fiscal policy and upgrades that of monetary policy. This contribution aims to consider this particular contention by focusing on fiscal...

A major argument used against the use of fiscal policy comes from the view that there are automatic forces within an economic system to ensure high levels of demand. This paper argues that the case for fiscal policy in general rests on the proposition that there are no such market forces that...

Current macroeconomics, the ‘New Consensus Macroeconomics’, downgrades significantly the role of fiscal policy as a stabilisation instrument of macroeconomic policy. This paper argues that fiscal policy deserves to be properly upgraded. More recent theoretical and empirical...

We contribute to the debate on whether the US large federal budget deficits are sustainable in the long run. We model the US government deficit per capita as a threshold autoregressive process. We find evidence that the US budget deficit is sustainable in the long run and that economic...

The stringent deficit criterion followed by the EMU is motivated by the belief that a sustainable fiscal arrangement is a must for a viable monetary union. In this paper we provide an empirical analysis of the issue of deficit convergence in the Euro area and compare and contrast the Euro-zone...

We contribute to the debate on whether the U.S. large federal budget deficits are sustainable in the long run. We model the U.S. government deficit per capita as a threshold autoregressive process. We find evidence that the U.S. budget deficit is sustainable in the long run and that economic...

This paper reconsiders the case for the use of fiscal policy based on a "functional finance" approach that advocates the use of fiscal policy to secure high levels of demand in the context of private aggregate demand, which would otherwise be too low. This "functional finance" view means that...

Recent developments in macroeconomic policy, in terms of both theory and practice, have elevated monetary policy while downgrading fiscal policy. Monetary policy has focused on the setting of interest rates as the key policy instrument, along with the adoption of inflation targets and the use of...

Recent developments in macroeconomic policy, both in terms of theory and practice, have elevated monetary policy while fiscal policy has been downgraded. The latter is rarely mentioned in policy discussion, apart from arguing to place limits on budget deficits and fiscal variables. This paper...