This paper takes stock of the academic and policy discussions on the fiscal institutions of EMU, confronts the framework in place with what is known of the desirable properties of fiscal policy in a monetary union, and discusses possible improvements. We start with a discussion of three...

The paper takes stock of the debate on the positive link between output volatility and the size of government - which reflects automatic stabilizers. After a survey of the literature, we show that the contribution of automatic stabilizers to output stability may have disappeared since the 1990s....

This paper provides an overview of the relative weight of Europe and East Asia in the context of the world economy and it assesses interdependence between the two regions. The prime motivation of the paper is that linkages between Europe and East Asia remain frequently underestimated. While the...