This paper presents an analysis of how alternative models of the business cycle can replicate the stylized fact that large governments are associated with less volatile economies. Our analysis shows that adding nominal rigidities and costs of capital adjustment to an otherwise standard RBC model...

The benefits implied by changing the growth model are at the heart ofthe heated political and economic debate in Spain. Increases in productivity and the reallocation of employment towards more innovative sectors are defended as the panacea for most of the ills afflicting the Spanish economy. In...

The successful matching model developed by Mortensen and Pissarides seems to find its hardest task in explaining the cyclical movements of some key labor market variables such as the vacancy rate and the vacancy-unemployment ratio. Several authors have discussed mechanisms compatible with the...

In this paper we analyze the impact of fiscal rules on the effectiveness of fiscal policy as a macroeconomic stabilizing instrument. First, we review the available evidence on the effects of fiscal policy to affect output in the short run and real interest rates and investment and growth in the...

This paper analyses the effect of the fiscal structure upon the trade-off between inflation and output stabilization in presence of technological shocks in a DGE model with nominal inertia. The model is calibrated to reproduce the main features of European economies and it integrates a rich menu...

In this paper we analyse the stabilisation properties of distortionary taxes in a New Keynesian model with overlapping generations of finitely-lived consumers. In this framework, government debt is part of net wealth and this adds a number of interesting channels through which fiscal policy...