This paper focuses on the trade-off faced by governments in deciding the allocation of public expenditures between productivity-enhancing public infrastructures and utility-enhancing public consumption. From the modeling point of view, the paper augments a standard New Open Economy...

This paper helps resolve a paradox in the literature, noticed by Alesina and Perotti (1995), which is that, although government employment is an important component of public spending, the debate on the effects of fiscal policy focuses almost exclusively on shocks to non-wage government...

This paper studies, in the context of a New Open Economy Macroeconomics (NOEM) model, the effects of ""public competition policies"" aimed at improving the efficiency of public spending. Such measures are modeled as an increase in the price elasticity of public consumption. The paper finds that...

This paper discusses some key issues in the application of dynamic general equilibrium analysis to open economy modelling. In the context of the new open economy macroeconomics paradigm, we focus on: (i) the currency denomination of sticky prices; (ii) the role of the current account and net...

This paper introduces perfect substitutability between private and public consumption in a dynamic, open economy with imperfect competition and nominal rigidities. This implies a direct crowding-out effect that, generalizing to the two-country case some well-known properties of a closed economy,...

Between 1999 and the onset of the economic crisis in 2008 real exchange rates in Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Spain appreciated relative to the rest of the euro area. This divergence in competitiveness was reflected in the emergence of current account imbalances. Given that exchange rate...

Between 1999 and the onset of the economic crisis in 2008 real ex-change rates in Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Spain appreciated relative to the rest of the euro area. This divergence in competitiveness was reflected in the emergence of current account imbalances. Given that exchange...

Most new EU member states (NMS) need further fiscal adjustment to support economic growth and macroeconomic stability. In this context, achieving income convergence with other EU members rests more with maintaining productivity growth, attracting foreign savings, and improving investment...