In January 2007, U.K. Government debt to GDP stood at 32.5%. By December 2019 it had grown to 89.5% and the latest data from September 2020 show a government debt level of just over £2 trillion, while its debt to GDP level did increase to 103.5%. The Quantitative Easing program by the Bank of...

This paper analyzes German and Spanish fiscal policy using simple policy rules. We choose Germany and Spain, as both are Member States in the European Monetary Union (EMU) and underwent considerable increases in public debt in the early 1990s. We focus on the question, how fiscal policy behaves...

This paper aims to contribute to the empirical literature on the interaction between monetary and fiscal policy. We consider the impact of monetary and fiscal policy shocks on inflation and output dynamics using a Time-Varying Parameter Factor-Augmented VAR (TVP-FAVAR). In baseline results from...

Focusing on banks, this study investigates the effect of economic policy uncertainty (EPU) on bank profitability in 22 advanced countries. The measures of bank profitability are net interest margin, lending-deposit spread, non-interest income ratio, after-tax return on asset, before-tax return...

This note shows that the Italian Mini BOTs proposed in 2019 bore the potential neither to become Italian legal tender nor to practically increase Italian government debt, but to practically cause a mere reduction in taxation and thence in government spending or transfers. Since the Eurozone...

This paper offers a comprehensive review of macroeconomic policy in democratic South Africa. It does so with two distinctive features. First, macroeconomic policy is analysed on four interlocking, and sometimes conflicting, levels: [1] policy as provided “on paper” in government plans and...

Future sustainable economic development depends heavily on public policy at regional, national, and global levels. Therefore, it is crucial to conduct a thorough policy analysis that ensures consistent and effective policy guidance. However, a major challenge in traditional policy analysis is...

This paper is a stock-taking exercise that brings together existing findings and new insights on the potential costs and benefits of EU membership for both Turkey and the EU. As far as Turkey is concerned, we focus on the costs and benefits of EU membership that are likely to result from...

We analyse the long-run imbalances of finance-dominated capitalism underlying the present crisis – which began in 2007 – with a focus on developments in the US and Germany. We argue that beyond inefficient regulation of the financial sector, the severeness of the present crisis has been...

The budget of the European Union (EU) is financed by the member states’ own resources and has different types of sources. A tax which represents the percentage of a member state’s Gross National Product into the European Union’s Gross National Product is one the main source for the budget....