The international monitoring of public finances in EMU member states is an essential element of the Stability and Growth Pact. Part of evaluating government budgets involves determining the sustainability of the envisaged consolidation measures. The academic and political debate on this topic...

Recently, we evaluated a fiscal consolidation strategy for the United States that would bring the government budget into balance by gradually reducing government spending relative to GDP to the ratio that prevailed prior to the crisis (Cogan et al, JEDC 2013). Specifically, we published an...

This paper analyses the structural developments underlying the evolution of public finances in Germany after qualification for EMU. For this purpose, we extend a disaggregated approach to cyclical adjustment in a way that allows us inter alia to distinguish the impact of discretionary fiscal...