Until the early 1990s, the discussions on fiscal policy primarily centered on the functions of economic stabilization, income redistribution and resource allocation. Long-term growth was not usually viewed as an end itself, and fiscal policy was often not sufficiently tailored to the different...

Why are we rich and others poor? What is preventing the less-developed countries from catching up with the more developed? How did we become rich? Underlying these questions are more fundamental ones: What is the nature of economic progress? What are its causes? I seek the answers to these...

What is the current state of sovereign credit risk across Euro zone? Does the recent fiscal crisis extend to other (non Euro zone) countries? Is Greece the center of the problem? How did the current fiscal crisis in the Euro area start? Who is behind it? Why can it evolve? How can it be...

The recent European economic crisis has dramatically exposed the failures of the various institutional mechanisms in place to maintain economic stability in Europe, and has unveiled the difficulty in achieving international coordination on fiscal and financial stability policies. Drawing on the...

The EU in 2020 is in the midst of a triple crisis of unemployment, public health and environmental collapse. These aspects are deeply intertwined and should be tackled together, since they all reflect structural problems of the European labor market. Job Guarantee is the proposed fiscal tool,...

The reinforced Stability and Growth Pact entered into force in December 2011 with a new set of rules for economic and fiscal surveillance of the EU Member States. To strengthen the effective enforcement the SGP introduced the policy innovation of reverse qualified majority voting in the EU...

In a world of high capital mobility, governments may be tempted to undercut each other's capital income taxes to attract capital from abroad. Since such tax competition may have detrimental effects for all countries, European policy makers have debated the introduction of a minimum capital...

As country after country in the European Union is called to respond to the current challenge of our time - high inflation and declining real wages - governments must engage in a transformative agenda and go beyond emergency energy vouchers and income support cashtransfers. And if the goal is to...

There is a large, but yet growing debate about the need to complement the European monetary union with a stronger fiscal union. This paper reviews the potential trade-offs between effectiveness, moral hazard problems, and permanent redistribution. In particular, we contribute to the question of...

Should a subset of member states of a federation be allowed to form a sub-union on some policy issue? When centralization is not politically feasible, allowing an enhanced cooperation agreement among a subset of countries permits the latter to gain benefits which would otherwise be lost....