Deficits and Debts





Fiscal Stimulus: Is more needed?

22.05.2008

By: Dimitri B. Papadimitriou, Greg Hannsgen and Gennaro Zezza

According to the authors' calculation, the credit crunch implies a fall in private expenditure of about $100bn due to reduced household borrowing, and a fall of about $160bn in expenditure due to reduced nonfinancial business borrowing. The shock to output from the financial crisis will be around $260bn each quarter this year. A fiscal stimulus given in one period only, and taken away in the next, will hardly change the picture.


Fiscal Action Versus Monetary Stimulus? A Faulty Comparison

26.02.2008

By: Volker Wieland, Goethe University of Frankfurt

Recent calls for fiscal stimulus in the United States have been based in part on papers that claim that targeted fiscal stimulus can boost economic activity more rapidly than monetary policy with less impact on inflation. In this brief, I evaluate that claim in the context of several well-known economic models.


The cause of tax evasion are taxes

20.02.2008

By: Wolfgang Münchau

Germany's jihad against tax evaders is a macroeconomic non-event.


Getting desperate

28.01.2008

There is clear blue water between us and the Americans


Eurointelligence Briefing Notes

The Stability and Growth Pact

The Stability and Growth Pact (SGP) forms part of the rules and procedures for fiscal policy of the member states of the euro area. The SGP has been subject to criticism long before it was officially agreed at the EU summit in Dublin in 1997 and ever since. The debate about the SGP reflects some of the deep ideological divisions that have accompanied the creation of economic and monetary union. The opponents of the SGP have criticised inter alia that it is pro-cyclical and anti-growth.


Copyright © 2006 Eurointelligence Advisers Limited