EU Member countries have shown different degrees of ambition to reach a budget position of "close to balance or in surplus". Differences in ambition can only partly be explained by the relative size of cyclical safety mar­gins or differences in the number of votes in the ECOFIN Council. It is...

We project the path of the public debt and primary surpluses for a number of countries in the euro area under a fiscal rule based on a set of estimated fiscal policy reaction functions. Our fiscal rule represents a fiscal analogue to a well-known monetary policy rule, and it is calibrated using...

We formulate and estimate a simple fiscal policy reaction function for the euro area and individual euro area countries. Our reaction function allows for primary surpluses to feature three components: an anti-cyclical response of primary surpluses to the output gap, a response to the debt-GDP...

This paper characterizes long-run and short-run optimal fiscal policy in the labor selection framework. In a calibrated non-Ramsey decentralized equilibrium, labor market volatility is inefficient. Keeping fixed the structural parameters, the Ramsey government achieves efficient labor market...

It is conventionally held that countries are worse off by forming a monetary union when it comes to macroeconomic stabilization. However, this conventional view relies on assuming that monetary policy is conducted optimally. Relaxing the assumption of optimal monetary policy not only uncovers...

Based on a panel data model this paper investigates whether the effects of fiscal policy on national saving in Europe have changed after the Maastricht Treaty came into force. Recently Giavazzi, Jappelli and Pagano (2000) found evidence that national saving responds nonlinearly to fiscal policy...

This paper studies how investment tax incentives stimulate output in a medium-scale DSGE model, which allows for a variety of fiscal financing mechanisms. We find that the horizon following a positive shock in investment tax incentives is crucial. The shock is highly expansionary in the long...

We investigate the impact of errors in medium run tax revenue forecasts on the final budget balance. Our analysis is based on fiscal data for the entirety of German states and takes advantage of revenue forecasts and respective errors that can be considered as exogenously given in the budgeting...

This paper revisits Political Budget Cycles (PBCs) in the enlarged European Union (EU). Based on a panel of 25 current EU member states from 1996 to 2012, we show that governments frequently fiscally stimulate the economy prior to elections; a phenomenon that is seemingly not only an ‘Eastern...

We provide a systematic analysis of fiscal consolidation in a medium-scale dynamic general equilibrium model. Our results show that the choice of the consolidation instrument is very important, not only with respect to the short- and long-run output effects of the different consolidation...