The existing literature on political budget cycles looks at the temptation for incumbent governments to run a greater deficit before an election by considering the characteristics of the incumbent. We propose here to look at the signals the incumbent receives from the voters. For this purpose,...

This paper addresses the question of a technical change in one the components of the Stability and Grown Pact (SGP). Indeed, the SGP is composed of (1) a political commitment, (2) a preventive element, and (3) a dissuasive element, and an improvement of the SGP efficacy can come from any of...

We propose a new categorization of international organizations to account for the fact that within multilateral international organizations, states may engage in “enticement” strategies in order to advance their policy preferences. Thus, to the traditional multilateral/bilateral...

After the fuzziness in Europe that surrounded the implementation of the excessive deficit procedure foreseen by the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP), the European Union had to restore the credibility of the weakened fiscal rule. On March 2005, the 25 members amended the SGP. The constraint was to...

This paper provides a challenging view to the tax harmonization issue. The literature often proposes tax harmonization to avoid free-riding behaviors in free-trade areas, and more particularly in monetary unions. Countries may decrease their tax rates in order to develop tax competitive...

This paper addresses the question of the social policy harmonization in the European Union. In adopting a common monetary policy Europe is faced with structural and fiscal concerns, as national growth levels differ. Another possible factor in output shocks are the levels of various social...

This paper presents the results of an empirical study of price dispersion in homogeneous goods markets. Modern economic theory suggests that inevitable asymmetries of information in markets lead to an equilibrium in which price dispersion is present even when goods are perfectly homogenous. In...

This paper addresses the question of the likelihood of a race to the bottom in a monetary union, like the Euro-zone, that could result from tax competition between countries. This fear of a race to the bottom is used both in the economic literature and the political arena to promote tax...

The paper proposes an overview of the literature on monetary policy. It shows the influence of the debates in the theoretical literature on the actual implementation of policies, as well a the counter effect. The European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) is largely studies a an exampe of this...

On its face, unemployment seems to be a concept easy to grasp. But when one looks closer, the intricacies are numerous and assump-tions are multiple. Nowadays, the New Classical School is a bit closer to New Keynesianism than ever before. It still has a strong footprint in Monetarism, since in...