The purposes of this paper are twofold: first, it aims at critically evaluating the solvency criterion, pioneered by Hamilton and Flavin (1986), which is nowadays almost hegemonic in the analysis of public debt sustainability, and at illustrating alternative measures of sustainability grounded...

This work presents five structural co-integrating VAR models used to describe the economies of France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain in the years 1983-1998 and to analyse their economic policies. Shortrun dynamics move around the long-run structure, represented by money, goods and...