The volume collects the essays presented at the 15th Workshop on Public Finance organised by Banca d'Italia in Perugia from 4 to 6 April 2013. The workshop focused on the link between fiscal policy and macroeconomic imbalances and comprised four sessions. The first session concentrated on the...

In a stylised framework of fiscal policy determination that considers both structural targets and cyclical factors, we find significant cyclical asymmetry in the behaviour of fiscal variables in a sample of fourteen EU countries from 1970 to 2004, with budgetary balances (both overall and...

The paper examines the development of Italy�s public finances after the consolidation period 1992-97, which secured participation in the European Monetary Union from the outset. The �structural� developments in the main budgetary components are assessed, excluding the effects of...

This paper studies the effects of fiscal policy on private GDP, inflation and the long-term interest rate in Italy using a structural vector autoregression model. To this end, a database of quarterly cash data for selected fiscal variables for the period 1982:1-2004:4 is constructed, largely...

We study the effects of fiscal policy on macroeconomic developments in Italy over the period 1982-2010 with a Structural Vector Autoregression (SVAR) model. We include public debt and impose the government budget constraint in the estimation. In contrast with previous research we also include...

We examine the impact of four factors on the fiscal policies of the euro-area countries over the last two decades: the state of public finances, the European fiscal rules, cyclical conditions and general elections. We rely on information actually available to policy-makers at the time of...

Whether discretionary fiscal policies in industrialized countries act counter- or pro-cyclically and whether their reaction is symmetric or asymmetric over the cycle are still largely unsettled questions. This uncertainty remains even when attention is restricted to euro-area countries, where...

We test whether the sharp increase in sovereign spreads of euro area countries with respect to Germany after the explosion of the Greek crisis was due to deteriorating macroeconomic and fiscal fundamentals or to some form of financial contagion. Our analysis includes indicators of domestic and...

Is there a relation between wage bargaining institutions and unemployment? The humpshape hypothesis�, first introduced by Calmfors and Driffill (1988), states that countries with highly centralized and highly decentralized wage bargaining processes have a superior performance in terms of...

The aim of this work is to identify the determinants of health spending differentials among Italian regions, which could highlight the existence of potential margins for savings. The analysis exploits a dataset for the panel of the 21 Italian regions starting in the early 1990s and ending in...