We analyze the role of fiscal policy and intra-European trade in business cycle synchronization in the EU for the period 1995-2008. There is a broad consensus that the relationship between fiscal policy and business cycle comovements and between trade integration and cyclical synchronization are...

The aim of the paper is to analyse the Stability and Growth Pact of EMU in a two-country model of monetary union with rational expectations and with spillovers of macroeconomic policies between the countries. The paper concentrates on tax policy, and shows that the results on optimal policy...

We use a dynamic game model of a two-country monetary union to study the impacts of an exogenous fall in aggregate demand, the resulting increase in public debt, and the consequences of a sovereign debt haircut for a member country or bloc of the union. In this union, the governments of...

In light of persistent in ation dispersion and rising debt levels in the EMU, this paper investigates the welfare implications of budget-neutral scal policies that counteract in ation di erentials. In a two-country DSGE model of a monetary union with traded and non-traded goods a national scal...

Using an estimated large-scale New-Keynesian model, we assess welfare and business cycle consequences of a fiscal union within EMU. We differentiate between three different scenarios: public revenue equalisation, tax harmonisation and a centralised fiscal authority. Relative to the status quo,...

Labor mobility is commonly taken as a property of an optimal currency area. But how does that property affect the outcome of fiscal policies? In our model, we show that perfect (costless) labour mobility is not necessarily welfare improving, since it prevents the national fiscal authorities from...

Fiscal policy is widely criticized for its failure to act as a stabilizing countercyclical force in the European Monetary Union. Two periods should be distinguished: Prior to the Financial Crisis of 2008, when monetary policy had traction to pursue stability for the aggregate eurozone, fiscal...

Between 1999 and the onset of the economic crisis in 2008 real exchange rates in Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Spain appreciated relative to the rest of the euro area. This divergence in competitiveness was reflected in the emergence of current account imbalances. Given that exchange rate...