Empirical fiscal policy reaction functions based on ex post data cannot be said to describe fiscal policymakers intentions, since they utilise data which did not exist when their decisions were made. A characterisation of what fiscal policymakers were trying to do requires real time data. This...

Following the Maastricht criteria, a country seeking to join the European Monetary Union cannot have inflation in excess of 1.5 percent plus the average inflation in the three "best performing" EU countries. This inflation reference value is a non-increasing function of the number of EU members....