The policy focus on excessive leverage in the euro area has raised interest in developing comprehensive analytical approaches to better understand the interrelationship between leverage and deleveraging processes across economic agents. In particular, the interplay between government debt and...

This paper argues that fiscal convergence in the Euro area has been achieved at the expenses of real divergence in unemployment, investment and at, at least temporarily, growth. Statistical and econometric analysis support the view that the current fiscal framework has addressed debt...

The new EU fiscal framework builds on several overlapping target measures and convergence rules. Thus, it is not clear how strict goals the framework sets for public finances. In this paper we build a simulation framework that solves the minimum fiscal effort under different assumptions on the...

After a brief introduction dealing with critical opinions of some economists on the European austerity policy, the authors point out that austerity as a means of achieving fiscal consolidation and financial stability is applied when the fiscal domain is weak. After analyzing the effects of the...

In this paper, we investigate the consequences of the rise in educational attainment on the US generational accounts. We build on the 1995 accounts of Gokhale et al. (1999) and disaggregate them per schooling level. We show that low skill newborns are characterized by a negative generational...

We investigate the effects of official fiscal data and creative accounting signals on interest rate spreads between bond yields in the European Union. Our model predicts that risk premia contained in government bond spreads should increase in both the official fiscal position and the expected...

Using an extended data set of EU countries ranging from 1971-2006 and relevant econometric methods, we investigate the economic, political, and institutional determinants of government deficits in the EU. The results show a strong opportunistic behaviour of policymakers which leads to political...

This paper briefly summarizes the orthodox approach to banking, finance, and money, and then points the way toward an alternative based on socioeconomics. It argues that the alternative approach is better fitted to not only the historical record, but also sheds more light on the nature of money...

This paper analyzes the real (direct) and financial crowding out in India between 197071 and 200203. Using an asymmetric vector autoregressive (VAR) model, the paper finds no real crowding out between public and private investment; rather, complementarity is observed between the two. The...