According to the 2001 Spanish budgetary previsions, the government deficit is about to disappear. We analyse this matter within a generational accounting framework. Accounting for the recent expansive phase of the economic cycle, we find that current fiscal policy is also intertemporally...

Is there a role for debt beyond curing overaccumulation of capital? Does dynamic efficiency and the infeasibility of debt Ponzi schemes eliminate any Pareto-improving role for a government in a competitive economy with complete markets? Is there an optimal maturity structure of public debt?...

We consider a dynamic general equilibrium model with collective wage bargaining and investigate how unemployment dynamics are affected by two types of budgetary policies. In line with traditional reasoning, a balanced-budget rule amplifies fluctuations in the short run, whereas an...

Pre-Accession Transition Countries (PATCs) aim at early admittance to the monetary club. Their fiscal indicators - deficit and debt - do not show any serious symptoms. Closer scrutiny reveals, however, that the interest burden of their public debt might be underestimated, and that restructuring...

We consider the properties of two monetary policy rules (monetary targeting, Taylor-type interest rate rule) in an intertemporal equilibrium model with capital accumulation and two outside assets (government bonds, fiat money). The paper shows that the long-run behaviour of the economy depends...

We consider the properties of two monetary policy rules ("strict inflation targeting", "constant money growth rule") in an intertemporal equilibrium model with flexible prices in which monetary policy is "active", while fiscal policy is "passive". Specifically, we assume that the fiscal agent...

This paper investigates the differences between directly and indirectly seasonally adjusted aggregates. This difference is derived analytically for linear seasonal adjustment methods. GDP data for five European countries and three classes of seasonal adjustment methods are used to show...