In this note, I examine how the responsiveness of the Swedish public budget to business-cycle conditions has developed between 1998 and 2009. I document substantial changes in three components behind the budget elasticity: (i) the average level of personal income taxes has fallen substantially,...

In this note, I examine how the responsiveness of the Swedish public budget to business-cycle conditions has developed between 1998 and 2009. I document substantial changes in three components behind the budget elasticity: (i) the average level of personal income taxes has fallen substantially,...

Using data from 29 European countries over 2002Q1-2019Q4, we estimate automatic stabilizers using various techniques, and show that the use of simple measures of government size as proxies is based on assumptions that are unrealistic and potentially misleading. Relaxing these assumptions allows...

This paper re-examines the relationship between government size and output volatility from two perspectives. First, we use a wider international data set of 91 countries over the period 1980?1999 and thus not only the OECD data that have thus far been utilized. Second, we also allow for time...

In this paper we review the European macroeconomic policy framework, and address the issue of setting safe deficit targets - targets that make it very unlikely that a country exceeds the 3 per cent ceiling of the Stability and Growth Pact. In this context, the scope for an increase in public...

A stochastic general equilibrium model is set up in order to analyse whether automatic stabilizers are a good tool in terms of mitigating risk. It is found that the potential benefits to be derived from automatic stabilizers depend on various factors including the degree of real wage rigidity...

In the EU Member States in Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe (CESEE-10), budgetary positions have been observed to react less strongly to GDP changes than in the euro area. In the observation period, automatic stabilizers mostly operated on the revenue side, while the response of...