Paper examines the problem of choice of an optimal fiscal rule in the long run. An ideal rule would typically assure fair distribution of utility over generations, while allowing to maintain the sustainable fiscal position. Three commonly used types: debt, deficit and expenditure rules are...

In this paper we investigate the logic and the workings of fiscal rules, with focus on rules for subnational governments. We argue against a simplistic view that sees the writing of numerical limits on fiscal variables as the solution to fundamental fiscal problems. We suggest that international...

One of the most often discussed features of the Stability and Growth Pact is the rigidity of its 3% deficit rule. In the recent time several reform proposals aim at alleviating the rule in order to allow more room for the automatic stabilizers to operate. As the 3% limit became in the recent...

This paper traces the euro zone’s inadequate macroeconomic performance in recent years back to the predominance of a restrictive macroeconomic policy mix based on a ‘new monetarist’ approach to economic policy. An approach based on a (post-)Keynesian analysis is presented as a growth and...

El tema de la inflación ha sido uno de los más debatidos en los últimos meses. Los incrementos de precios registrados en el primer trimestre de 2005 han avivado la discusión. Este trabajo muestra que el problema está lejos de estar fuera de control y que determinadas medidas de política...

Macroeconomic Policies of the Economic and Monetary Union: Theoretical Underpinnings and Challenges Philip Arestis and Malcolm Sawyer, The Levy Economics Institute and Leeds University Abstract This paper presents two issues: first, an effort to decipher the type of economic analysis and...

This paper describes the Federal Reserve's analytical framework under Volcker and Greenspan, as it was constructed in the early 1980s, during a period of high inflation. It traces the modeling and policy implications of this framework. It discusses the Fed's actual track record and the state of...

In the debate on monetary policy strategies on both sides of the Atlantic, it is now almost a commonplace to contrast the Fed and the ECB by pointing out the former’s flexibility and capacity to adjust rigidity, and the latter’s extreme caution, and obsession with low inflation. In looking...

The identification is made of those conditions by which it is possible to generate synergy or mutually enforcing relations between economic development and environment conservation with the perspective of a systems entropy flow limits. Monetary and fiscal policies are the framework of structural...

The Broad Economic Policy Guidelines contain the answers of the European Com-mission and the EU-governments to the growth and employment problems in the EU. These guidelines have been the EU-economic policy concept for ten years now, but this concept has not been able to generate sustained...