In the last decades, though in absence of formal reforms, some events have changed the role of the Italian Parliament in the budget decision, introducing the executive supremacy in the budget decision. The new balance of power between executive and legislative suggests to reshape the...

The subsidiarity principle governing the collection of statistical data in a monetary union may result in asymmetrical information. The national governments may be tempted to distort their economic and financial data communicated to the union’s central bank in order to influence its monetary...

In this paper, we model and forecast monthly budget balance expenditures. The annual dimension of budget figures is integrated with an approach based on higher frequency data. To this end we develop an econometric model (disaggregated at expenditures category level) based on behavioral equations...

The Commissioner for the Italian spending review has presented his program to finalize a revision of expenditure meant to eliminate waste, inefficiencies and perks in Italian public spending. The control of the public expenditure dynamics and reduction of inefficiencies has become an emergency...

This paper uses fiscal consolidation experiences of a sample of OECD economies over the period 1970 to 2008 to examine the interplay between fiscal adjustments and economic performance.The main purpose of this paper is to study whetherthe impact of fiscal consolidation on the real economy is...

In the past decade, growing concern for fiscal developments and the performance of the public sector has urged several countries to make a closer link between government budgets and measurable indicators on the quantity and quality of services delivered and on their impact on socio-economic...

What are the properties of optimal fiscal and monetary policies with heterogeneous agents? This is a pressing question, given the wealth of evidence on heterogeneity in cash holdings and labor income. Yet, until recently it remained largely unexplored. In this paper, I show that with...

The common central bank of a monetary union tends to lead a more accommodative monetary policy in order to avoid the default of the moderately indebted member countries whereas the most hardly indebted countries have to default. The optimal inflation rate increases the more numerous are the...

The paper studies the opportunity to introduce a centralized insurance mechanism in Europe. Indeed, in a monetary union, monetary policy can efficiently stabilize common shocks but it is much less usable in case of asymmetrical shocks and /or if the countries are structurally heterogeneous....

The fiscal policy rule implicit in the Stability and Growth Pact, has been rationalised as a way to ensure that national fiscal policies remain sustainable within the EU, thereby endorsing the independence of the ECB. We empirically examine the sustainability of European fiscal policies over the...