Unlike the crisis years of 2007-2009 (when the insolvency of large banks was a major problem), the current round of the global financial crisis has fiscal origins. Almost all developed countries suffer from an excessive public debt burden that has been built up over the last two decades or more....

The euro crisis remains unresolved and the euro currency union incomplete and extraordinarily vulnerable. The euro regime’s essential flaw and ultimate source of vulnerability is the decoupling of central bank and treasury institutions in the euro currency union. We propose a “Euro...

This paper provides a set of detailed estimated fiscal reaction functions for a panel of twenty industrialized countries, and it discusses commonalities and differences with regard to systematic fiscal policies across countries. In general, the countries in the panel adjust tax revenues strongly...

The current economic crisis has hit all European countries hard, but some are much more severely affected others. The problems manifest in European peripheral countries, especially Ireland, Spain, and Greece, have roots in domestic policy mistakes. However, the European context of these policy...

Unlike the crisis years of 2007-2009 (when the insolvency of large banks was a major problem), the current round of the global financial crisis has fiscal origins. Almost all developed countries suffer from an excessive public debt burden that has been built up over the last two decades or more....

This study applies Taylor's (2000) proposed fiscal rule to EU-15 countries. We show that such a simple, flexible and transparent fiscal rule, if applied to individual EMU countries, could improve the enforceability of the Stability and Growth Pact. This rule is used to compute the structural...

Twenty years of euro history confirms the euro's stability and position as the second global currency. It also enjoys the support of majority of the euro area population and is seen as a good thing for the European Union. The European Central Bank has been successful in keeping inflation at a...

The euro crisis remains unresolved and the euro currency union incomplete and extraordinarily vulnerable. The euro regime's essential flaw and ultimate source of vulnerability is the decoupling of central bank and treasury institutions in the euro currency union. We propose a “Euro Treasury”...

Twenty years of euro history confirms the euro's stability and position as the second global currency. It also enjoys the support of majority of the euro area population and is seen as a good thing for the European Union. The European Central Bank has been successful in keeping inflation at a...

With this paper, our objective is to empirically study public debt sustainability by estimating a fiscal reaction function where the primary balance relative to GDP is assumed to be a function of the public debt to GDP ratio of the previous year and of other macroeconomic variables. In...