Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the information content of the variables that can help detecting external and internal imbalances in an early stage. The starting point is the Scoreboard, where nine indicators are chosen in order to increase macroeconomic surveillance of...

The aim of this paper is to investigate the significance of a set of macroeconomic variables in the assessment of the sovereign ratings provided by the three main credit rating agencies in different periods in time and for countries belonging to different categorizations. Ratings have a great...

What advice can be given to the policymaker to reduce the burden of public debt after a crisis? In this situation, the debt consolidation calls for fiscal surplus based on increases in taxes and/or reductions in public spending. This paper aims at answering to the above question. Specifically,...

Italy's overall GDP growth has been dismal in recent years and this poor performance has been compounded by a declining trend in labour productivity and total factor productivity growth. This paper looks into growth accounting and structural indicators and analyses Italy's performance against...

In this paper we compare the dynamic properties of the Italian Treasury Econometric Model (ITEM) with those of QUEST III, the endogenous growth model of the European Commission (DG ECFIN) in the version calibrated for Italy. We consider an array of shocks often examined in policy simulations and...

Central banks are continually considering the problem of how to identify which price changes should be considered permanent and which entirely temporary. Indeed, due to the delayed effect that monetary policy uses to put its choices into action, a wrong valuation of the type of inflation can...

In this paper we compare the dynamic properties of the Italian Treasury Econometric Model (ITEM) with those of QUEST III, the endogenous growth model of the European Commission (DG ECFIN) in the version calibrated for Italy. We consider an array of shocks often examined in policy simulations and...

This paper provides a full technical description of a variant of the Italian General Equilibrium Model (IGEM), a dynamic general equilibrium model used as a laboratory for policy analysis at the Department of the Italian Treasury. This version of IGEM presents four specific key features: (i)...