As the coronavirus pandemic spread across the globe in early 2020, the European Central Bank as well as national governments in the euro area enacted or announced numerous economic policy measures to counteract the severe economic consequences of the resulting lockdowns. In this paper, the...

The prevailing narrative about the Great Recession is that it was caused by a financial crisis. This paper refutes that explanation and offers an alternative, namely that issuance of bad government debt played a key role in escalating a regular recession to an economic crisis

This paper discusses why Greece has done so poorly in comparison with all other European Union countries since the onslaught of the global financial crisis in 2008. To show what was wrong with its fiscal adjustment, this paper compares Greece with the other European Union country that was hit be...

The recent financial and economic crisis has triggered bold and diverse policy responses to prevent further, sharper and prolonged adverse effects to the financial and the real sector. The measures for alleviating the cycle were a feature both of the advanced and the emerging and developing...

The worst global downturn since the Great Depression has caused ballooning budget deficits in most nations, as tax revenues collapse and governments bail out financial institutions and attempt countercyclical fiscal policy. With notable exceptions, most economists accept the desirability of...

In response to the global crisis a number of new institutional measures have been introduced in the fiscal framework, both on the UE and on the member states’ level, and the question is: have these measures provided better fiscal sustainability outcomes? We approach this question by looking at...

This document analyzes the patterns of fiscal and monetary policy in five economies of the Latin American Southern Cone (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay) during four episodes of international crises: 1994, 1997-1999, 2001 and 2008. In contrast with earlier episodes when most...

This paper analyses the short-run effects of fiscal consolidation measures on economic activity in the euro area during the euro crisis. It presents new econometric estimates on the link between cumulative GDP growth and fiscal austerity measures during 2011-2013. The main empirical finding is...

In this paper, we use the estimated three-region DSGE model GEAR, which pictures Germany, the Euro Area and the Rest of the world and which is used by the Deutsche Bundesbank for policy analysis, to analyze how discretionary fiscal policy in Germany and the rest of EMU affected GDP growth and...

The worldwide financial crisis revealed that some of the basic consensuses concerning the macroeconomic policy framework and the roles of the central banks were no longer tenable. This prompted rethinking of central bank objectives, strategies and policy instruments, with particular focus on the...