We estimate the political economy determinants of budget deficit forecast errors. Since the adoption of the Stability Pact, Eurozone governments have manipulated forecasts before elections. The political orientation and the institutional design of governments also affects the quality of forecasts.

Cyclical components are analytically computed in a theoretical model of stochastic endogenous fluctuations and growth. Volatility is shown to depend on the speed of convergence of the cyclical component, the expected length of a cycle and on the altitude of the slump. Taxes affect these channels...

Die Auswirkungen einer staatlichen Verschuldung auf das Wirtschaftswachstum werden im Rahmen eines erweiterten neoklassischen Wachstumsmodells mit AK-Technologie analysiert. Der Staat verfolgt das Ziel einer festen Defizitquote und einer langfristig konstanten Schuldenquote. In diesem Fall gibt...

Monetary policy and fiscal policy are connected in various ways. This is why the adoption of the Euro as a common European currency has been accompanied by the setup of the European Union's Stability and Growth Pact, a framework for the coordination of the EU countries' fiscal policies. In this...

Die vorliegende Arbeit analysiert die Fortschritte der Transformation hin zu sozialen Marktwirtschaften aus Sicht der Unternehmen, indem wir aufzeigen inwiefern es den betrachteten Ländern gelungen ist, ein nachhaltig stabiles Wirtschaftsumfeld zu generieren. Als besonders bedeutsam in diesem...

On the basis of an empirical application for Germany, we compare two methods for measuring fiscal sustainability, the Generational Accounting approach and the OECD-Method. We show that both methods can be transferred into each other. Therefore the indicators belonging to one method can be used...

The German Income Tax Reform 2000, which announced a reduction in income tax rates to be implemented in a series of three stages, was welcomed by the public as a step towards unleashing lurking growth potentials. Nonetheless, in the course of the year 2001 a dispute arose, centering around the...

In the context of EMU fiscal equalization schemes have been proposed as a means to stabilize regions against asymmetric shocks. A theoretical analysis shows that besides reducing the cross-sectional income variance the redistributive element of fiscal equalization causes incentive effects for...

This paper presents an applied general equilibrium model for Germany. The model integrates specific labour market institutions in an otherwise standard general equilibrium framework. There are sectoral wage negotiations for two skill types of workers between firms and trade unions. The...

Recent evidence on the effect of government spending shocks on consumption cannot be easily reconciled with existing optimizing business cycle models. We extend the standard New Keynesian model to allow for the presence of rule-of-thumb (non-Ricardian) consumers. We show how the interaction of...