This paper investigates the impact that fiscal policy has on economic activity and sovereign debt during economic downturns in the euro area, mainly Germany and Spain. Our theoretical and empirical framework shows that the macroeconomic returns of austerity crucially depend on the values of...

In the past decade the Colombian Economic Authorities undertook a series of measures that reduced the structural fiscal deficit, decreased the Government currency mismatch and deepened the local fixed-rate public bond market. This paper presents some evidence suggesting that these improvements...

We provide a test of the sustainability of the Spanish government deficit over the period 1850-2000, from the estimation of a cointegration relationship between government expenditures and revenues derived from the intertemporal budget constraint. The longer than usual span of the data allows us...

This paper examines how the member countries of a monetary union react to country-specific shocks and to shocks from the rest of the world, when the budget deficit is the only policy instrument available. We develop a three-country model in which countries show different preferences regarding...

The focus of this paper is on the short-term macroeconomic effects of fiscalpolicy in Colombia in a structural vector autoregression context. Governmentspending shocks are found to have positive and significant effects on output,private consumption, employment, prices and short-term interest...

This paper reviews the relationship between the business cycle and public finances in Colombia. The evidence shows that cyclical movements in output systematically affect the situation of public finances. Hence, the distinction between the cyclical and permanent (i.e. structural) components of...

Structural VAR and Structural VEC models were estimated for Chile and Colombia, aiming at identifying fiscal policy shocks in both countries between 1990 and 2005. The impulse responses obtained allow the calculation of a pesofor- peso ($/$) effect on output of a shock to public spending and to...