We develop a general equilibrium model with a detailed structure of government expenditures and revenues, calibrate it to the Greek and German economies, and use it to study the link between fiscal discipline and defaults. We show that even if the Greek government had entered the Great Recession...

This working paper examines recent trends in EU corporate demography and the role of policy responses during the COVID crisis. It compares recent bankruptcy and business creation rates to past trends. Pre-crisis trends were showing declining business creations and rising bankruptcies. After...

Front -- Contents -- Introduction -- Austere ideas for austere societies from Aristotle to Aquinas -- Austerity v. reason from Mandeville to Voltaire -- Austerity for capitalism from Smith to Weber -- Austerity for stability from the Great War to the next -- Austerity can wait Keynes --...

We develop a closed economy model in order to study the interactions among sovereign risk premia, fiscal limits and fiscal policy. The stochastic fiscal limit, which measures the ability and willingness of the government to service its debt, arises endogenously from dynamic Laffer Curves. The...

Macroeconomic conditions deteriorated in 2012. Growth slowed to 2.7 percent from 5 percent in 2011. Both the external and fiscal deficits widened significantly, to 10 percent and 7.6 percent of GDP, respectively. The 2012 fiscal outcome entailed a significant slippage from the authorities’...