Pre-Accession Transition Countries (PATCs) aim at early admittance to the monetary club. Their fiscal indicators – deficit and debt - do not show any serious symptoms. Closer scrutiny reveals, however, that the interest burden of their public debt might be underestimated, and that...

The paper by Faini focuses on the relationship between fiscal policy and interest rates. With reference to the European context, the paper addresses two issues. First, it investigates whether national fiscal policies either affect country specific spreads or the average level of euro-area...