This paper analyses the reaction of fiscal policy to the cycle in OECD countries. The results suggest that while overall government balances were counter-cyclical in the past and more so in economic downturns than in upswings, discretionary fiscal policy was neutral on average. However,...

Employment volatility is larger for young and old workers than for prime aged. At the same time, in economies with high tax rates, the share of total hours supplied by the young/old workers is smaller. These two observations imply a negative correlation between government size (measured by the...

This paper examines the relationship between fiscal policy and regional business cycle fluctuations in Japan. In particular, we focus on the effects of “discretionary” changes in public investment, a portion of investment unrelated to the current state of macroeconomic circumstances. The...

This paper applies multivariate Blanchard-Perotti SVAR methodology to analyze disaggregated short-term effects of fiscal policy on macroeconomic aggregates in Egypt and Tunisia. The main finding of this paper is that, strong evidence shows that fiscal policy procyclical in Egypt and Tunisia....

The volume collects the essays presented at the 15th Workshop on Public Finance organised by Banca d'Italia in Perugia from 4 to 6 April 2013. The workshop focused on the link between fiscal policy and macroeconomic imbalances and comprised four sessions. The first session concentrated on the...

I examine the effects of fiscal policy actions on private consumption in a yearly panel of sixteen OECD countries conditional on the phase of the business cycle and the state of the public finances. I demonstrate that binding liquidity constraints on households can alter the efficacy of the...

The paper links money supply to the state budget deficit in the Italian historical context. The process of monetization of government deficit is analysed and is related both to the fixity of the exchange rate and free capital mobility typical of the 1860-1913 period. The empirical evidence...

This paper analyses the reaction of fiscal policy to the cycle in OECD countries. The results suggest that while overall government balances were counter-cyclical in the past and more so in economic downturns than in upswings, discretionary fiscal policy was neutral on average. However,...

We compare the transmission of fiscal shocks in four OECD countries and in the Euro area. Fiscal shocks are identified in a SVAR by the restrictions that disturbances to government consumption, government investment and government employment increase output and deficits contemporaneously. These...

What fraction of the business cycle volatility of government purchases is accounted for as endogenous reactions to overall macroeconomic conditions? We answer this question in the framework of a neoclassical representative household model where the provision of a public consumption good is...