This paper provides a study of bond yield differentials among EU government bonds issued between 1993 and 2005 on the basis of a unique dataset of issue spreads in the US and DM (Euro) bond market. Interest differentials between bonds issued by EU countries and Germany or the USA contain risk...

The financial crisis of 2007-2009 led to a renewed increase in government deficits and debts in many EU countries, causing a full-fledged fiscal crisis in Greece and severe fiscal pressures in other euro-area countries. This has prompted a series of proposals for improving the fiscal framework...

German public finances are currently subject to considerable changes in the macro-economic environment and this is probably only the beginning of more far-reaching developments in the future. Like many other European countries, Germany, on the one hand, faces the fiscal problems emerging from an...

Fiscal rules specify quantitative targets for key budgetary aggregates. In this paper, we review the experience with such rules in Japan and in the EU. Comparing the performance of fiscal policy in the 1980s and 1990s until 2003, we find that the fiscal rule of the 1980s exerted some but not...