This note shows that the Italian Mini BOTs proposed in 2019 bore the potential neither to become Italian legal tender nor to practically increase Italian government debt, but to practically cause a mere reduction in taxation and thence in government spending or transfers. Since the Eurozone...

We examine the effect of monetary and fiscal policies on yields on short- and long-term indexed bonds. We extend the current literature by providing evidence about a period in which the government adopted declining inflation and deficit targets. In such cases the policy shift could be perceived...

During the euro area (EA) sovereign debt crisis, lenders in financial markets raised default risk premiums on sovereign bonds issued by countries that were then consid-ered too risky. Among some of these countries (especially Greece), fiscal policy had not been implemented according to good...

The global financial crisis showed that both authorities and markets failed to properly assess the size and the evolution of the public debt stock in various economies. In some countries the monetary authorities focused excessively on inflation, without taking into account other key...

In this paper, the focus lies on the way the German government spends, how it spends and what the connection between finance ministry and central bank is. The institutions involved in the process are identified and discussed. As a member of the Eurozone, Germany's national central bank is not...