Foremny, Dirk, Solé-Ollé, Albert, (2016), “Who’s Coming to the Rescue? Revenue-Sharing Slumps and Implicit Bailouts During the Great Recession”, ZEW, Discussion Paper No. 16-049, Μάιος Local governments across the globe experienced high levels of fiscal stress during the last recession (Ter-Minassian and Fedelino, 2010). The causes of these fiscal imbalances were twofold. First, many local governments had to deal with a reduction in their own-source revenues, based as they were on taxes (most notably, …Read More

Orphanides, Athanasios, (2016), “Fiscal Implications of Central Bank Balance Sheet Policies”, Centre for Economic Policy Research, Ιούλιος Under ordinary circumstances, the fiscal implications of central bank policies tend to be seen as relatively minor and escape close scrutiny. The global financial crisis of 2008, however, demanded an extraordinary response by central banks which brought to light the immense power of central bank balance sheet policies as well as their major …Read More

Collard, Fabrice, Habib, Michel, Rochet, Jean-Charles, (2016), “The reluctant defaulter: A tale of high government debt”, Voxeu, 13 Ιουλίου Since the Global Crisis, sovereign debt levels have exploded in many OECD countries.  This column presents a new measure of government debt – maximum sustainable debt. This measure takes account of the fact that a shortfall in growth naturally increases the probability of default, while allowing for the possibility of rollover. Applications to recent data suggest …Read More

Arora, Vivek, (2016), “Five Lessons from a Review of Recent Crisis Programs”, iMFdirect, 11 Ιουλίου IMF lending increased to unprecedented levels in the aftermath of the global financial crisis. As difficulties emerged, we extended financial support to countries across the world—in the euro area, Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and emerging economies in Europe. The IMF tried to draw lessons in real time as the crisis evolved in order to adapt our …Read More

Ricardo Reis, (2016), “QE in the future: the central bank’s balance sheet in a fiscal crisis”, Centre for Economic Policy Research, Ιούλιος Analysis of quantitative easing (QE) typically focus on the recent past studying the policy’s effectiveness during a financial crisis when nominal interest rates are zero. This paper examines instead the usefulness of QE in a future fiscal crisis, modeled as a situation where the fiscal outlook is inconsistent with …Read More

Janssen, Ronald, (2016), “The OECD And Job Protection: New Findings But Old Policy Recipes On ‘Your Wage Or Your Job”, Social Europe, 7 Ιουλίου One of the key findings from the 2016 Employment Outlook just released by the OECD is that easier firing does not create jobs. Moreover, the OECD also finds that loosening job protection in the middle of an economic downturn results in immediate and substantial job losses. However, …Read More