This paper responds to the development policy debate involving the World Bank and the IMF on the use of fiscal policy not only for economic stabilization but also to promote economic growth and increase per capita income. A key issue in this debate relates to the effect of the composition of...

In this paper we present empirical facts on oil exploitation and a model that can replicate some of these facts. In particular, we show that the time path of the oil price, on the one hand, and the extraction rate, on the other hand, seem to follow a U-shaped and an inverted U-shaped...

Sustainability of public debt has become a major issue in the debate over the success of the European Monetary Union. The authors pursue the question of whether Germany’s fiscal policy is sustainable. With sustainability of a given fiscal policy, the authors refer to a policy that...

The paper considers the transition of an economy from non-renewable to renewable energy. The Hotelling theorem suggests to extract a non-renewable resource in an optimal way such that the resource tends to be depleted when optimally extracted. Yet,it might not be reasonable to deplete...

In this paper we test whether German public debt has been sustainable by resorting to a test proposed by Bohn (1998). We apply non-parametric and semi-parametric regressions with time depending coefficients. This test shows that the mean of the coefficient relevant for sustainability has been...

We present a macroeconomic growth model in which investment in physical capital exhibits positive externalities which raise the stock of knowledge. Treating physical capital and knowledge as two separate variables, we show that the model can generate endogenous growth. It is demonstrated that...

This paper studies the sustainability of fiscal policy for selected Euro-area countries. We focus on those countries that either have a high debt to GDP ratio (Italy) or have recently violated the Maastricht treaty by permitting more than three percent of the deficit to GDP ratio (France,...