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...

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...