This paper presents an optimal fiscal policy response to address the basic trade-off between the automatic stabilisation properties of budgets and the long run fiscal positions. The framework is an overlapping generations model a la Weil (1989), extended to account for stochastic endowments and...

Employing huge economic stimulus packages was a common response of many policy leaders during the past financial crisis. In Germany for instance, the government enacted two fiscal packages with an overall volume of approximately 80 billion Euros. On the other hand, the distortions in the banking...

We assess the role of national fiscal policies, as automatic stabilizers, within a monetary union. We use a two-country New Keynesian DGE model which incorporates non-Ricardian consumers (as in Gali et al. 2004) and a home bias in the composition of national consumption bundles. We find that...

This paper builds on the discussion paper published by HM Treasury in 2003 alongside the UK Government's assessment of the case for EMU entry. The paper considers the potential for fiscal policy to play a greater role in stabilisation policy if the UK were inside EMU. The paper considers: the...

This paper describes recent trends on the efficiency of stabilisers in the European Union. Using both macro evidence on the cyclical sensitivity of budget deficit to economic activity, and micro evidence on the tax and expenditure profiles, we conclude, in agreement with the recent literature,...

In a New Keynesian DSGE model with non-Ricardian consumers, we show that automatic stabilization according to a countercyclical spending rule following the idea of the debt brake is well suited both to steer the economy and in terms of welfare. In particular, the adjustment account set up to...

I study the spill-over effects of legislated discretionary tax changes in the United States, Germany, and the United Kingdom to 11 Eurozone countries for the period 1980Q1-2018Q4 employing Local Projections (Jordà, 2005). In general, I find spillovers from US tax legislation to have the...

Structural budget-balance rules with countercyclical elements appear well suited to stabilize the macroeconomic volatility of oil-exporting countries and have been used successfully by other commodity exporters. Using a global DSGE model, the efficient design of such rules is found to depend on...

This paper raises questions on the impact of an aging population on the effectiveness of automatic stabilizers (automatic changes in taxes and spending during booms and recessions) in smoothing the business cycle. Population aging will increase the components of tax revenue and spending, which...

Using data from 29 European countries over 2002Q1-2019Q4, we estimate automatic stabilizers using various techniques, and show that the use of simple measures of government size as proxies is based on assumptions that are unrealistic and potentially misleading. Relaxing these assumptions allows...