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...

The evaluation of the output cost of monetary stabilization is one of the main macro questions to be addressed when comparing alternative strategies and paths to monetary convergence in the economies in transition. In general, the evaluation of the output costs of stabilization (and hence of the...

We estimate a small structural model for inflation, the output gap, the domestic interest rate and the exchange rate for Hungary during the period of the transition (1991-1999). The transmission of monetary policy impulses to macro variables is characterized in a similar fashion to that 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...

Whether discretionary fiscal policies in industrialized countries act counter- or pro-cyclically and whether their reaction is symmetric or asymmetric over the cycle are still largely unsettled questions. This uncertainty perdures when attention is restricted to euro-area countries, where these...