This paper analyzes German and Spanish fiscal policy using simple policy rules. We choose Germany and Spain, as both are Member States in the European Monetary Union (EMU) and underwent considerable increases in public debt in the early 1990s. We focus on the question, how fiscal policy behaves...

This paper analyzes empirically the impact of fiscal policy on the price level for the cases of Germany and Spain. We investigate whether the fiscal theory of the price level (FTPL) is able to deliver a reasonable explanation for the different performances of the price level in these two...

This paper asks whether tax cycles can represent the optimal policy in a model without any extrinsic uncertainty. I show, in an economy without capital and where labor is the only choicevariable (a Lucas-Stokey economy), that a large class of preferences exists, where cycles are optimal, as well...

Recent attempts to incorporate optimal fiscal policy into NewKeynesian models subject to nominal inertia, have tended to assume that policymakers are benevolent and have access to a commitment technology. A separateliterature, on the New Political Economy, has focused on real economies...

This paper represents a first attempt at a tractable analysis of how monetary policy influences the income distribution in an economy. It presents a monetary growth model in which inflation affects credit market efficiency, and via this link, influences capital accumulation, and the income...

We propose and apply a new approach for analyzing the effects of fiscal policyusing vector autoregressions. Unlike most of the previous literature this approachdoes not require that the contemporaneous reaction of some variables to fiscalpolicy shocks be set to zero or need additional...

This paper analyses the effects of discretionary fiscal policy by presenting new empiricalevidence for Germany within a structural vector autoregression (SVAR) framework. FollowingBlanchard and Perotti (2002), the SVAR model is identified by applying institutionalinformation. We find no...

This paper analyzes empirical market utility functions and pricing kernelsderived from the DAX and DAX option data for three market regimes. Aconsistent parametric framework of stochastic volatility is used. All empiricalmarket utility functions show a region of risk proclivity that is...

Normal distribution of the residuals is the traditional assumption in the classicalmultivariate time series models. Nevertheless it is not very often consistent with the real data.Copulae allows for an extension of the classical time series models to nonelliptically distributedresiduals. In this...

We examine the global dimension of inflation in 24 OECD countries between 1980 and 2007in a traditional Phillips curve framework. We decompose output gaps and changes in unitlabor costs into common (or global) and idiosyncratic components using a factor analysis andintroduce these components...