The smoothing impact of fiscal stabilizers (proxied by government expenditures) on business cycle volatility is studied for a panel of European Union (EU) countries in the period 1970-1999. Special emphasis is put on the investigation of possible nonlinearities in the relationship between Gross...

Global current account imbalances have been one of the focal points of interest for policymakers during the last few years. Less attention has been paid, however, to the growing imbalances within the Euro-area. In the short period since the commencement of the EMU two distinct groups of member...