IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/liu/liucej/v2y2005i1p111-136.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

European Economic Policies at Work : the costs of Price Stability and Budget Consolidation

Author

Listed:
  • Carlo Altavilla
  • Ugo Marani

Abstract

The paper investigates whether the policy framework adopted by the EMU participating countries might create recessive tendencies. First, we check the existence of a deflationary bias by separately analysing monetary and fiscal policy. The analysis of monetary policy focuses on a backward- and a forward-looking monetary rule. The reaction functions are estimated to capture the criteria that a centralized monetary authority should use in setting short-term interest rate. Second, a comparative analysis is made of the ability of different central banks to stabilize output and inflation. Precisely, we compare the strategy followed by the European Central Bank, the Deutsche Bundesbank and the US Federal Reserve. Then, a measure of fiscal bias is retrieved by estimating the impact that a change in the primary surplus to GDP ratio has on the real economy. Finally, we search for a quantitative assessment of the recessive propensity of the European economic policies by estimating an overall policy bias. The results suggest the EU institutional set-up might create and/or amplify the recessive tendencies. The policy constraints the EMU members face were dreamt when the Community was struggling with an inflationary legacy. The danger nowadays is not inflation but rather its opposite, deflation. As a consequence, the EU institutions need to be at least partially reformed

Suggested Citation

  • Carlo Altavilla & Ugo Marani, 2005. "European Economic Policies at Work : the costs of Price Stability and Budget Consolidation," European Journal of Comparative Economics, Cattaneo University (LIUC), vol. 2(1), pages 111-136, June.
  • Handle: RePEc:liu:liucej:v:2:y:2005:i:1:p:111-136
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ejce.liuc.it/18242979200501/182429792005020106.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Monetary and Fiscal Strategy; ECB; EMU;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E52 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Monetary Policy
    • C52 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric Modeling - - - Model Evaluation, Validation, and Selection

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:liu:liucej:v:2:y:2005:i:1:p:111-136. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Laura Ballestra (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/liuccit.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.