This paper first reviews a number of stylised facts concerning OECD country business cycles over the past four decades. In general, the amplitude of business cycles has fallen, driven mainly by declining fluctuations of domestic demand. As a result, international divergencies of cyclical...

We analyze the effectiveness of fiscal policy in general and automatic stabilizers in particular to stabilize output in Eurozone member states under the current institutional framework of fiscal governance. First, a descriptive analysis based on macro data is conducted for the period 2007-2014,...

This Policy Brief examines how minimum income support (MIS) schemes contribute to the stabilization of disposable incomes in times of crisis in Europe. MIS systems act as a "safety net of last resort" in many European welfare states, but to varying degrees. The results from the simulation of...

Within the EU, taxation and the EU's eastern enlargement are currently seen as one of the most important problems to be solved and projects to be realized. Each of these two topics covers a vast set of issues which have to be dealt with. At the same time only few attempts have been made to...

The report focuses on the relative macroeconomic performance since the global financial crisis of six Northern European countries with a special emphasis on Finland. While fiscal and monetary policies have definitely impacted on macroeconomic outcomes in the six countries examined, as a whole...

Emerging market economies were major beneficiaries of the economic boom before 2007. More recently, they have become victims of the global financial crisis. Their future development depends, to a large extent, on global economic prospects. Today the global economy and the European economy are...

This paper uses a multi region DSGE model with collateral constrained households and residential investment to examine the effectiveness of fiscal policy stimulus measures in a credit crisis. The paper explores alternative scenarios which differ by the type of budgetary measure, its length, the...

This paper studies real-time measures of the output gap and fiscal policy stance estimates for EU countries. We construct a comprehensive real-time data set on fiscal forecasts and study whether there are systematic differences between the European Commission and IMF estimates of the output gap...