In this study, we will perform a simulation exercise to investigate whether the use of explicit fiscal rules improves the macroeconomic performance in the economic framework of the European Union (EU), where the fall in income levels occurred very asymmetrically, and this has accentuated the...

This study explores the impact of balanced-budget rules on states' fiscal policy outcomes, and tests whether this impact depends on the political and economic environments in light of the American states' experience from 2004 to 2010. The findings suggest that (1) budget rules are more binding...

The budget dispute between Italy and the European Commission in 2018 gave new impetus for the debate about the reliability of output gap estimation methods and their use for calculating structural budget balances. In this paper we review the main properties of the mainstream approaches and...