Of the many good ideas currently being discussed in Europe, the most interesting proposal is to let national unemployment schemes manage the regular business cycle, and to provide European financing to extend the duration of unemployment benefits during a crisis period.

The construction of the euro area left aside the question of a fiscal union, but the crisis re-opened the debate. Of the three classical functions of fiscal policy – provision of public goods, redistribution and stabilisation – only the last provides a clear justification for fiscal policy...

The reconsideration of the complex set of European fiscal rules should be a priority in terms of euro-area reform. The rules contributed to excessive fiscal austerity during the crisis, thus helping to aggravate and prolong its economic, social and political consequences. Moreover, either...

In this paper, we analyse the effects of transitory fiscal expansions when public debt is used as liquidity by the private sector. Aggregate shocks are introduced into a tractable flexible-price, incomplete-market economy where heterogenous, infinitely-lived agents face occasionally binding...

During the recent inflation episode, the paradigm of separated objectives for monetary and fiscal policies has shown some limits. Fiscal policies have helped mitigate inflation. We advocate for the emergence of a new paradigm that gives equal consideration to fiscal and monetary policies and...