Since the fall of last year, EMU countries have experienced a slowdown in economic activity triggered by a deceleration of exports. The expansion of internal demand has been more or less intact due to low interest rates and higher terms of trade. Consumer confidence has continued to rise and...

This paper investigates whether fiscal competition affects the structure of public spending, where theory predicts a shift from residential public goods to industrial public goods. We propose an empirical model that specifically accounts for the strategic nature and endogeneity of fiscal...

While there are many methods to measure the competitiveness of an economy, most of these concepts ignore the fact that competitiveness can change not only because of market processes such as wage negotiation but also because of political decision making. Governments that compete with others for...

What are the macroeconomic effects of tax adjustments in response to large public debt shocks in highly integrated economies? The answer from standard closed-economy models is deceptive, because they underestimate the elasticity of capital tax revenues and ignore crosscountry spillovers of tax...

Europe's debt crisis casts doubt on the effectiveness of fiscal austerity in highly-integrated economies. Closed-economy models overestimate its effectiveness, because they underestimate tax-base elasticities and ignore cross-country tax externalities. In contrast, we study tax responses to debt...

This book studies the international coordination of monetary and fiscal policies in the world economy. It carefully discusses the process of policy competition and the structure of policy cooperation. As to policy competition, the focus is on monetary and fiscal competition between Europe and...