We apply uni- and multivariate unobserved components models to the study of European growth cycles. The multivariate dimension enables to search similar or, more strongly, common components among national GDP series (quarterly data from 1960 to 1999). Three successive ways to exhibit the...

This paper studies the characteristics of investment in slave trade and associated trades in France during the eighteenth century. The study of the accounts of an investor from Nantes, Bertrand de Cœuvre, shows that his investment compared favourably with domestic alternatives. It was more...

This paper reviews the arguments in favour and against the Stability and Growth Pact signed by the countries of the Euro area. We find the theoretical debate to be inconclusive, as both externality and credibility arguments can be reversed to yield opposite, and equally plausible conclusions. We...

According to the fiscal theory of the price level (FTPL), the interactions between monetary and fiscal policies with governments facing the possibility to act in a non-Ricardian manner make the general price level be fully determined. Here, depending on the expectations framework, we show to...

Keynes' main concern in the General Theory is about the capacity of an economy to return to a full employment equilibrium when subject to a (negative) demand shock. He maintains that money wages cuts may not help reabsorb unemployment, as they do not necessarily imply a fall in real wages. On...

Though the promoters of the fiscal theory of the price level consider it as a counterrevolution to the Quantity theory, by demonstrating that price determination is also fiscally driven, we show that the standard framework they use is relevant only when public debt is monetised in the long run....