The paper analyses in a simple setting a game between an inflation-conservative central bank and a fiscal authority subject to an upper limit on the budget deficit. It is shown that complementarity or substitutability between the policies and the preference of each authority for the other...

It is largely recognised that fiscal policy will have larger responsibilities for cyclical stabilisation in EMU given the loss of the monetary instrument. At the same time, the EMU's budgetary framework emphasises the need to rely on automatic fiscal stabilisers, rather than active policies in...

An early criticism of the Stability and Growth Pact has pointed to its asymmetric nature and the weak mechanisms to prevent politically-motivated fiscal policies: its constraints would bite in downswings but not in upswings, especially if in the latter the electoral cycle increases the...

The Stability and Growth Pact has been under fire ever since it was born. But is the Pact a flawed fiscal rule? Against established criteria for an ideal fiscal rule, its design and compliance mechanisms show strengths and weaknesses. The latter tend to reflect tradeoffs typical of...