We study the determinants of sovereign bond yield spreads across 10 EMU countries between Q1/1999 and Q1/2010. We apply a semiparametric time-varying coefficient model to identify, to what extent an observed change in the yield spread is due to a shift in macroeconomic fundamentals or due to...

This paper investigates the impact of a balanced budget fiscal policy expansion in a regional context within a numerical dynamic general equilibrium model. We take Scotland as an example where, recently, there has been extensive debate on greater fiscal autonomy. In response to a balanced budget...

According to conventional wisdom, fiscal policy is more effective under a fixed than under a flexible exchange rate regime. In this paper we reconsider the transmission of shocks to government spending across these regimes within a standard new-Keynesian model of a small open economy. Because of...

In this paper, the sustainability of public debt is interpreted as the result of the interaction of fiscal policy with the economic environment, and not as a statistical concept as in most of the recent literature. If debt must not explode over time, policy makers have to respond to the changing...

The goal of this paper is to analyze the relationship between defense expenditures and economic growth in Romania, trying to find out the existence, direction and intensity of this connection. The methods which I used are cluster analysis, quintile analysis, regression technique and Granger...

The study aims to examine the concept of automatic fiscal stabilization in the context of macroeconomic adjustment policies. To this end, first a conceptual distinction between discretionary public adjustment policies and non-discretionary ones is achieved. Second, sufficient and necessary...

The volume collects the essays presented at the 11th Workshop on Public Finance organised by Banca d'Italia in Perugia on 26-28 March 2009. The workshop examined the issue of pension reform with the purpose of highlighting the recent analytical developments and the most relevant policy issues....

We study the dynamics of U.S. public debt in a parsimonious VAR. We find that including debt feedback ensures the stationarity of debt while standard VARs excluding debt may imply an explosive debt path. We also find that the response of debt to inflation or interest shocks is not robust and...

We assess fiscal performances in G7 and selected Latin American and Asian countries. We analyze two questions: (i) have public finances been sustainable? (ii) do countries follow more restrictive fiscal policies when debt starts to rise? We find that: (i) The traditional unit root tests often...

The paper presents both the New Consensus and Keynesian equilibrium within the usual fourcompetitive macro-markets structure. It gives theoretical explanations of the perniciouseffects that the NCM governance, which has been designed for ergodic stationary regimes,brings about in Keynesian...