Austerity Fiscal policies versus Development policies in Italy and European Union The debate on economic policy issues underway in Italy and EU shows two different stances: on one hand a support to restrictive budgetary policy, aimed at achieving the balance of government finance, as required by...

Wage shares have fallen substantially in Europe since the early 1980s. To some extent this is due to a macroeconomic policy package that encourages wage flexibility and wage competition. A system of wage coordination in the Euro area would facility a return to a productivity-oriented wage policy...

Sovereign risk premia in several euro area countries have risen markedly since 2008, driving up credit spreads in the private sector as well. We propose a New Keynesian model of a two-region monetary union that accounts for this “sovereign risk channel.” The model is calibrated to the euro...

The European Union has recently implemented one of the biggest reform packages in its history. Developed solutions are designed to (1) strengthen EU’s resilience to shocks and (2) improve its shock absorption capabilities. It seems that so far stress was mainly placed on the first objective....

This paper explores the macroeconomics of fiscal austerity and deflation in an economy with public debt. A binding budget deficit cap destabilizes the economy by turning the government budget into an automatic destabilizer. Public debt helps maintain AD in the presence of deflation because...

Recently governments, economists, and international financial institutions have been debating the merits of further fiscal stimulus to combat the Great Recession versus fiscal austerity or “adjustment” – that is, higher taxes and/or lower government spending – to combat budget deficits....

The recent rise of the public debt limits governments’ room for manoeuvre in terms of economic policy and it seems urgent to try to slow down its progression. This paper shows that even if financial repression appears as an appealing solution for the so called peripheral countries of the euro...

The aim of this paper is to discuss some of the great challenges that will characterize the XXI Century. In the background we consider the problem of the relationship between “Us” and the “Others”, that is how to reconcile the power of Western universalism with the multitudes of other...

This paper presents the Econometric Model of Public Finance, eMPF. The model has been developed and maintained at the Polish Ministry of Finance to facilitate forecasting process, especially for the budget and convergence programme purposes, and to deliver scenario analyses. We present the...

A New Consensus in Macroeconomics (NCM) has emerged over the past couple of decades or so, which has become highly influential in terms of current thinking on the macroeconomy and of economic policy, especially monetary policy. Its main implication for economic policy has been the implementation...