In this paper I evaluate the usefulness of a set of fiscal indicators as early-warning-signal tools for annual General Government Net Lending developments for some EMU countries (Belgium, Germany, Spain, France, Italy, The Netherlands, Ireland, Austria, Finland) and an EMU aggregate. The...

Short-term fiscal indicators based on public accounts data are often used by European policy makers. They represent one of the main sources of publicly available intra-annual fiscal information. Nevertheless, these indicators have received limited attention from the academic literature analysing...

The analysis of the macroeconomic impact of fiscal policies in the euro area has been traditionally limited by the absence of quarterly fiscal data. To overcome this problem, we provide two new databases in this paper. Firstly, we construct a quarterly database of euro area fiscal variables for...

We analyse the impact of fiscal policy shocks in the euro area as a whole, using a newly available quarterly dataset of fiscal variables for the period 1981-2007. To allow for comparability with previous results on euro area countries and the US, we use a standard structural VAR framework, and...

Do public sector wages exert pressures on private sector wages, or has the private sector a leadership role in wage setting? This paper tries to isolate the pure signalling effect that one sector might exert on the other by controlling for other determinants of wages (prices, productivity,...

This paper examines the role of government wages in ensuring macroeconomic stability and competitiveness in the euro area. Recent empirical evidence suggests that government wage expenditure is subject to a pro-cyclical bias in most euro area countries and at the euro area aggregate level....

In this paper I evaluate the usefulness of a set of fiscal indicators as early-warning-signal tools for annual General Government Net Lending developments for some EMU countries (Belgium, Germany, Spain, France, Italy, The Netherlands, Ireland, Austria, Finland) and an EMU aggregate. The...

Short-term fiscal indicators based on public accounts data are often used by European policy makers. They represent one of the main sources of publicly available intra-annual fiscal information. Nevertheless, these indicators have received limited attention from the academic literature analysing...