Rather than stabilising aggregate demand, discretionary fiscal policy tends to amplify cyclical fluctuations of output. The commonly accepted reasons are political economy and uncertainty. In the EU, the pro-cyclical nature of discretionary fiscal policy has also been associated with the...

This paper provides a technical description of the overlapping generations model used by the Joint Research Centre to analyse tax policy reforms, including in particular pension and demographic issues. The main feature of the EDGE-M3 model lies in its high level of disaggregation and the close...

The article analyses recent developments in business investment for a large group of EU countries, using a broad set of analytical tools and data sources. We find that the assessment of whether or not investment is currently low varies across benchmarks and countries. At the euro area level and...