The international monitoring of public finances in EMU member states is an essential element of the Stability and Growth Pact. Part of evaluating government budgets involves determining the sustainability of the envisaged consolidation measures. The academic and political debate on this topic...

This paper estimates a fiscal reaction function (FRF) framework for euro area countries and derives a novel approach to measure fiscal fatigue. As in previous studies, we find evidence that euro area sovereigns abide, on average, by (weak) sustainability constraints. The primary balance improves...

We assess public finances solvency for Euro Area countries using quarterly data between 1999Q1 and 2020Q4. Through a country-by-country analysis, the answer to the title question is true. For most countries, (i) the primary budget balance reacts positively to the lagged public debt ratio and...

This paper studies the impact of national fiscal rules on government size as measured by the ratio of government expenditures to gross domestic product. We develop a model of the budgetary process and show that a common pool problem may arise which can be mitigated through fiscal rules. We test...