By distinguishing between discretionary and non-discretionary fiscal policy, this paper analyses the stability of fiscal rules for EMU countries before and after the Maastricht Treaty. Using both Instrumental Variables and GMM techniques, it turns out that discretionary fiscal policy has...

In this paper we analyze whether the effect of fiscal policy differs across the business cycle. To tackle this question, we use a regime-switching error-correction framework, where nonlinearities are only modeled in the short-run and have no impact on the long-run equilibrium. Regime specific...