Section 4(1) of the Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management Act 2003 requires the Central Government to eliminate revenue deficit and thereafter generate revenue surplus. In 2010-2011, unexpectedly high receipts from auction of spectrum in the 2100 MHz and 2300 MHz bands accounted for 55% of...

Brunila and Tujula suggest that estimating output gaps using a production function may be preferable in the presence of large structural breaks in the economy. In the Finnish experience, they show that the qualitative conclusions are not overly sensitive to the choice of method (HP filter or...

The second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic has interrupted the recovery in Germany. GDP is set to decline in the first quarter of this year, after stagnating in the previous quarter. However, with the vaccination campaign progressing, the economic burden of the pandemic will ease and the recovery...

We argue for the resurrection of an old idea: electricity use as an indicator of U.S. economic activity. Our analysis relies on associations - the 40-year correlation between growth rates in real GDP and electricity use can be as high as 89% - and intuition. Electricity use and economic...