The 2007+ credit crunch and economic crisis put European governments in severe debt, with talk about a Greek partial default. It also put the European banks into a zombie condition, while under Basel III the capital requirement rises from 8% to 10.5% (which requirement does not cover public debt...

The rules of the Eurozone cause the euro to function as the gold standard. The US economy performs better in some respects, partly because of the advantages of fiat money. The treaty on the EMU has to be adapted in order not to become dependent upon current ad hoc measures, with the loss of...

The welfare state was created after 1950 with counterproductive mechanisms and this caused high inflation and high unemployment and stagnating growth by 1970, called stagflation. Since 1970 governments redressed the welfare state but did not succeed in finding workable mechanisms. They rather...

In this paper we investigate the logic and the workings of fiscal rules, with focus on rules for subnational governments. We argue against a simplistic view that sees the writing of numerical limits on fiscal variables as the solution to fundamental fiscal problems. We suggest that international...

The Broad Economic Policy Guidelines contain the answers of the European Com-mission and the EU-governments to the growth and employment problems in the EU. These guidelines have been the EU-economic policy concept for ten years now, but this concept has not been able to generate sustained...

Maintaining sustainable fiscal policy has been increasingly important in the scope of economists and the policy makers as the key requirement of macroeconomic stability and sustainability of an economy. Without exception, the issue of fiscal sustainability also being in the spotlight for the...

This paper reviews the existing empirical evidence on the short-term impact on prices of fiscal variables and assesses it against new results from harmonised simulations, conducted with six well-established econometric models used by the ECB and five national central banks (NCBs) of the...

Most people seem to think that Russia’s economy and fiscal situation are still crucially tied up with international oil prices and the exchange rate of the rouble, although this view has recently been challenged by some analysts. Empirical research on this topic is, however, scanty. In this...

This paper provides some further tests for the proposition that a larger public sector leads to smaller output volatility. Both Gali and Fatas & Mihov have provided some evidence which appears to support this proposition. Their evidence is, however, based on a relatively small sample of...

In this paper we analyze macroeconomic interactions among trade unions, the central bank and the fiscal policymaker. We explicitly model trade unionsconcern for public expenditure, paving the way for an analysis of the potential gains from cooperation between the fiscal policymaker and the trade...