There is a large, yet growing debate about the need to complement the European monetary union with a stronger fiscal union. This article reviews the potential trade-offs between effectiveness, moral hazard problems, and permanent redistribution. Addressing the counter-arguments against a tighter...

There is a growing debate about complementing the European Monetary Union by a more comprehensive fiscal union. Against this background, this paper emphasizes that there is a trade-off in designing a system of fiscal transfers ("fiscal capacity") in a union between members of different size. A...

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...

The paper looks at the determinants of fiscal adjustments as reflected in the primary surplus of countries. Our conjecture is that governments will usually find it more attractive to pursue fiscal adjustments in a situation of relatively high growth, but based on a simple stylized model of...

Using fiscal reaction functions for a panel of actual euro-area countries the paper investigates whether euro membership has reduced the responsiveness of countries to increases in the level of inherited debt compared to the period prior to succession to the euro. While we find some evidence for...

The canonical New Keynesian model specifies inflation as the present-value of future real marginal cost. This paper tests this New Keynesian Phillips Curve and exploits projections of future real marginal cost generated by VAR models to assess the model’s ability to match the behavior of...

The paper uses fiscal reaction functions for a panel of euro-area countries to investigate whether euro membership has reduced the responsiveness of countries to shocks in the level of inherited debt compared to the period prior to succession to the euro. While we find some evidence for such a...