After a brief introduction dealing with critical opinions of some economists on the European austerity policy, the authors point out that austerity as a means of achieving fiscal consolidation and financial stability is applied when the fiscal domain is weak. After analyzing the effects of the...

EU Member countries have shown different degrees of ambition to reach a budget position of "close to balance or in surplus". Differences in ambition can only partly be explained by the relative size of cyclical safety mar­gins or differences in the number of votes in the ECOFIN Council. It is...

EU Member countries have shown different degrees of ambition to reach a budget position of ""close to balance or in surplus"". Differences in ambition can only partly be explained by the relative size of cyclical safety mar-gins or differences in the number of votes in the ECOFIN Council. It is...

Identifying fiscal multipliers is usually constrained by the absence of a counterfactual scenario. Our new data set allows overcoming this problem by making use of the fact that recommendations under the EU's excessive deficit procedure (EDP) provide both a baseline no-policy-change scenario and...