We assess the impact of unexpected shocks to real interest rates and GDP growth on government budgets for nine European Union countries. Shocks are estimated as onestep-ahead forecast errors arising from a recursive bivariate VAR model. Our analysis is relevant, in particular, to deciding what...

The volume collects the essays presented at the 15th Workshop on Public Finance organised by Banca d'Italia in Perugia from 4 to 6 April 2013. The workshop focused on the link between fiscal policy and macroeconomic imbalances and comprised four sessions. The first session concentrated on the...

The ability of a two-sector model to quantify the contribution of the housing market to business fluctuations is investigated using U.S. data and Bayesian methods. The estimated model, which contains nominal and real rigidities and collateral constraints, displays the following features: first,...

We study the effects of electoral institutions on the size and composition of public expenditure in OECD and Latin American countries. We present a model emphasizing the distinction between purchases of goods and services, which are easier to target geographically, and transfers, which are...

We investigate the public-private pay gap in Italy in the period 1998-2008. Under random sampling we estimate an average wage di_erential in favour of public sector workers of about 14% for women and 4% for men, lower at the high tail of the wage distribution and in the Northern regions. The...

In this paper, we present a high-resolution Incoherent Quasi-elastic Neutron Scattering experiment on Crambin hydrated at h=0.6g/g. Hydration was attained by using D2O and H2O, in order to separate the contribution of the protein from that of the water. The spectra were interpreted in terms of...

The role of movements in real rates in explaining the relationship between long and short-term interest rates is explored using a model of optimal government debt management.