An EMU country that adheres to the Maastricht and the Stability and Growth Pact limits is implicitly promising not to allow its fiscal stance to deteriorate to a position in which it places pressure on the European Central Bank to forgo its price level target to finance fiscal deficits....

A country entering the EMU surrenders its monetary policy, and its debt becomes denominated in terms of a currency over which it has no direct control. A country's promise to uphold the fiscal limits in the Maastricht Treaty and the Stability and Growth Pact is implicitly a promise not to allow...

We present a dynamic and quantitative model of a fiscal solvency crisis in a monetary union. Diverse fiscal policies, which are subject to fiscal limits and stochastic shocks, can threaten a monetary union. The fiscal limits arise due to distortionary taxation and political will. Stochastic...

Governments are confronted with the growing realization that they face fiscal limits on the size of debt and deficits relative to GDP. These fiscal limits invalidate Bohn's criterion for fiscal sustainability, which allows explosive debt relative to GDP, eventually violating any fiscal limit. We...

Every country has a fiscal limit on debt, where that limit represents a debt level so high that the country's economic and political systems cannot raise taxes or reduce spending sufficiently to maintain solvency. At the limit, creditors flee, and the government faces a fiscal crisis. If we knew...

A country entering a monetary union gives up the right to determine its own monetary policy. Individual fiscal authorities promise passive fiscal policy, allowing the central monetary authority to use active monetary policy. Since a government, which can print its own money, can honor its...

Abstract: A country entering the EMU surrenders its monetary policy, and its debt becomes denominated in terms of a currency over which it has no direct control. A country's promise to uphold the fiscal limits in the Maastricht Treaty and the Stability and Growth Pact is implicitly a promise not...

In the aftermath of the recent financial crisis and recession, governments' actions around the world suggest a non-linear responsiveness of fiscal policy to debt. Additionally, governments are realizing that they face fiscal limits on the size of debt that they can repay. The fiscal limits arise...

In the aftermath of the recent debt crisis, many countries are implementing nonlinear fiscal policy rules, whereby the government’s responsiveness to debt must strengthen at higher levels of debt. This paper examines how a nonlinear fiscal policy rule affects the possibility of future...