We examine the impact of four factors on the fiscal policies of the euro-area countries over the last two decades: the state of public finances, the European fiscal rules, cyclical conditions and general elections. We rely on information actually available to policy-makers at the time of...

A precise assessment of the impact of the cyclical conditions on the budget is very important to correctly assess the state of public finances. Instead of using only GDP as a reference, the authors compute the trends and the cyclical components for a limited number of macroeconomic variables...

This paper describes a procedure for assessing the effects of the budget on economic activity in the short term. Based on counterfactual simulations of an econometric model, the procedure takes into account more relationships between the budget and the economy than other, more synthetic...

We examine the impact of four factors on the fiscal policies of the euro-area countries over the last two decades: the state of public finances, the European fiscal rules, cyclical conditions and general elections. We rely on information actually available to policy-makers at the time of...

In this paper, we present a disaggregated framework for the analysis of past and projected structural developments in the most relevant revenue and expenditure categories and the fiscal balance. The framework, in particular, distinguishes between the effects of discretionary fiscal policy and of...