Over the last thirty years or so the developments in the area of monetary and macroeconomic policies have been quite substantial. Within the new consensus macroeconomics (NCM), monetary policy is upgraded while fiscal policy is downgraded. This new monetary policy has been the main instrument of...

Against the commonly accepted view that in the run-up to EMU the Maastricht fiscal restraints were quite effective in re-aligning public finances in Member States that were showing large excessive deficits, Strauch and von Hagen stress that there are some objections concerning this initial sign...