This note identifies a severe mistake in my article “Unexpected Consequences of Ricardian Expectations” that appeard in this journal in the July 2013 issue.

Economists are widely familiar with the Ricardian equivalence thesis. It maintains that, given the time-path of government spending, a change in taxation does not alter the set of feasible life-time consumption plans of the households and affects neither the demand for commodities and services...

This paper aims to analyze the nexus between disaggregated public spending and GDP in the Euro Area for the period 1990-2010 at a disaggregated level, using a time series approach. We estimated this nexus for ten items of public spending according to the COFOG functional classification. Taking...

See also <I>Proceedings of Banca d' Italia Public Finance Workshop on "Rules and Institutions for Sound Fiscal Policy after the Crisis"</I> (pp. 443-475). Rome: Banca d'Italia.<P> and<P> 'From Budgetary Forecasts to Ex Post Fiscal Data: Exploring the Evolution of Fiscal Forecast Errors in the European Union'...</p></p></i>

This paper focuses on the observed empirical relationship between fiscal rules and budget deficits, and examines whether this correlation is driven by an omitted variable, namely voter preferences. We make use of two different estimation methods to capture voter preferences in a panel of Swiss...

If women have different economic preferences than men, then female economic and political empowerment is likely to change policy and household decisions, and in turn macroeconomic outcomes. We test the hypothesis that female enfranchisement leads to lower government budget deficits due gender...

On September 15-16, 2011 the annual Macroeconomics Research Workshop took place at Magyar Nemzeti Bank, Budapest, celebrating its 10th year of existence, out of which it was organized jointly with the CEPR for the 4th time. The workshop's title and main theme was ‘Fiscal Rebalancing, Public...

This note generalizes Feldstein’s (1976) criticism of Barro’s(1974) analysis for the case that the interest rate exceeds the growth rate. This is done by considering an economy in steady state where all agents hold “Barro expectations”: they believe that government debt must necessarily...

This paper explores the determinants of deviations of ex-post budget outcomes from first-release outcomes published towards the end of the year of budget implementation. The predictive content of the first-release outcomes is important, because these figures are an input for the next budget and...

The paper generalizes Feldstein's criticism (Perceived Wealth in Bonds and Social Security, 1976) of Barro's analysis (Are Government Bonds Real Net Wealth?, 1974) for the case that the interest rate exceeds the growth rate. This is done by considering an economy in steady state where all agents...