This paper analyzes German and Spanish fiscal policy using simple policy rules. We choose Germany and Spain, as both are Member States in the European Monetary Union (EMU) and underwent considerable increases in public debt in the early 1990s. We focus on the question, how fiscal policy behaves...

The estimation of an ordered probit model for currency reforms trying to end 31hyperinflations and three big inflations of the 20th century shows that the introduction of anindependent central bank and the adoption of a credibly fixed exchange rate are crucial for the successof a currency...

We propose and apply a new approach for analyzing the effects of fiscal policyusing vector autoregressions. Unlike most of the previous literature this approachdoes not require that the contemporaneous reaction of some variables to fiscalpolicy shocks be set to zero or need additional...

This paper analyzes empirically the impact of fiscal policy on the price level for the cases of Germany and Spain. We investigate whether the fiscal theory of the price level (FTPL) is able to deliver a reasonable explanation for the different performances of the price level in these two...

Recent attempts to incorporate optimal fiscal policy into NewKeynesian models subject to nominal inertia, have tended to assume that policymakers are benevolent and have access to a commitment technology. A separateliterature, on the New Political Economy, has focused on real economies...

Central banks, which used to be so secretive, are communicating more and more these days about their monetary policy. This development has proceeded hand in glove with a burgeoning new scholarly literature on the subject. The empirical evidence, reviewed selectively here, suggests that...

Over the past 15 years there has been remarkable progress in the specification and estimation of dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) models. Central banks in developed and emerging market economies have become increasingly interested in their usefulness for policy analysis and...

The remarkable stability of low domestic inflation in many countries requires explanation. In this paper, a number of competing hypotheses are evaluated on a stand-alone basis, and all are found to be inadequate. This includes the view that this outcome has been solely the result of more...

Recent theoretical work shows that changes in the volatility of inflation and/or unem-ployment affect equilibrium in°ation outcomes when the central banker's loss functionis asymmetric. We show that previous evidence offered in support of the propositionthat the volatility of unemployment helps...