Empirical fiscal policy reaction functions based on ex-post data cannot be said to describe fiscal policymakers intentions because they utilise data which did not exist when their decisions were made. A characterisation of what fiscal policy makers were trying to do requires real time data. This...

The persistence of large trade and budget imbalances has led to increasing demands for protectionist policies. Despite a substantial theoretical literature there appears to be no empirical literature on the use of tariffs as a macroeconomic policy instrument. This paper fills that gap, using the...

The literature argues that the benefits of an independent Central Bank accrue at no cost to the real side. In this paper, we argue that the lack of correlation between monetary autonomy and output variability is due to the proactive role of fiscal policy when faced with rigid monetary...

This paper studies the incentives to join or enlarge a monetary union under alternative assumptions about the extent of market reform within the union and in candidate countries. Lack of labour mobility, wage/price flexibility or fiscal reform brings costs for both new entrants and in the...

This paper uses a two-country overlapping generations model to study the international transmission of fiscal policy among open interdependent economies under free international capital mobility. With only lump-sum taxes and transfers, international transmission involves only pecuniary...

This paper considers the effects of monetary and fiscal policies in an optimizing model with capital accumulation and finite lives. An increase in monetary growth is no longer superneutral in a money-capital economy, but leads to a reduction in the real interest rate and increases in the capital...

This paper analyses the changes to the tax and social security systems that have occurred since Czechoslovakia's `velvet revolution' in 1989. It shows how the tax system is moving to meet the requirements of a market economy. It suggests that a particularly high priority has to be given to...

The paper investigates four challenges to exchange rate stability in the coming years and explores their implications for macroeconomic and exchange rate policy. The first section explores the importance of seigniorage in financing the government budget in Southern European countries. The second...

A new theory of price determination suggests that if primary surpluses are independent of the level of debt, the price level has to ‘jump’ to assure fiscal solvency. In this regime (which we call fiscal dominant), monetary policy has to work through seignorage to control the price level. If,...