The European fiscal governance framework remains incomplete, hindering policy coordination during economic shocks and affecting the transmission of the single monetary policy. High public debt and low public investment worsen resilience across Member States. Many policymakers, institutions, and...

In this paper we explore the impact of fiscal austerity on three different dimensions of public opinion (overall life satisfaction and confidence, attitude towards national authorities, and European institutions). Based on a panel of 26 EU countries, we find that, overall, fiscal consolidation...

In the presence of the zero lower bound, standard business cycle models with a Taylor-type monetary policy rule are prone to equilibrium multiplicity. A drop in confidence can drive the economy into a liquidity trap without any change in fundamentals. Using a prototypical sticky-price model, I...

The change in macroeconomic conditions since the ECB's strategy review in 2021 towards an environment characterised by above-target inflation, high interest rates, and renewed concerns about elevated government debt has been a vocal reminder of the intricate interdependencies between monetary...

This paper attempts to evaluate the impact of fiscal policy announcements by the Italian government on the long-term sovereign bond spread of Italy relative to Germany. After collecting data on relevant fiscal policy announcements, we perform an econometric comparative analysis between the three...

This report has been prepared to provide a general overview and assessment of the performance of the Portuguese economy under the EU/IMF adjustment programme and the remaining challenges ahead. Portugal's recent exit from the Programme implied the lapsing of the 12th and final review of...

This paper investigates the interplay between discretionary fiscal policy and inflation in the euro area, emphasizing the role of public debt levels in modulating this relationship. It explores how fiscal expansions or contractions influence inflationary pressures, particularly under varying...

The report assesses compliance with the terms and conditions set out in the updated MoU. The MoU was updated following the fourth review mission and was agreed between the Cypriot authorities and the programme partners, i.e. the European Commission (EC), the European Central Bank (ECB), and the...

We explore how fiscal consolidations affect private sector confidence, a possible channel for the fiscal transmission that has received particular attention recently as a result of governments embarking on austerity trajectories in the aftermath of the crisis. Panel regressions based on the...

In this paper, we examine the macroeconomic effects of alternative fiscal consolidation policies in the New Area-Wide Model (NAWM), a two-country open-economy model of the euro area developed at the European Central Bank (cf. Coenen et al., 2007). We model fiscal consolidation as a permanent...