I analyze how the introduction of financial frictions can affect the trade-off between output stabilization and inflation stability and whether, in the presence of financial frictions, the optimal outcome can be realized or approached more closely if monetary policy is allowed to react to...

Accumulating debt raises concerns about its implications for macroeconomic stability. This paper sheds light on the implications of high indebtedness for the macroeconomic volatility by identifying the main drivers of the evolution of debt in a set of countries. The country choice was based on...

Many advanced economies have recently embarked on fiscal austerity. As this has come at a time of high and rising income disparities, policy-makers have fretted about the inequality effects of fiscal consolidations. We shed new light on this issue by empirically investigating the (composition)...

The fact that the literature tends to find optimistic biases in national fiscal projections has led to a growing recognition in the academic and policy arenas of the need for independent forecasts in the fiscal domain, prepared by independent agencies, such as the European Commission in the case...

The current wave of technological change based on advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) has created widespread fear of job loss and further rises in inequality. This paper discusses the rationale for these fears, highlighting the specific nature of AI and comparing previous waves of...

The COVID-19 pandemic triggered renewed interest in the use of different fiscal spending and transfer programmes to address the worsening conditions and deepening inequalities within the labour markets. This paper reviews the role of specific fiscal spending and transfer programmes in shaping...

Out of four major structural changes affecting the US economy - namely a rising share of skilled workers, skill-biased technological change, decreasing progressiveness of taxation and productivity slowdown - we show that the decline in productivity growth not only is the main driver of the...

This study provides a critical assessment of various fiscal policy instruments - including direct public job creation, active labour market and care policies, social protection measures and tax reforms - and their effectiveness in supporting the most vulnerable groups in the labour market....