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fiscal policy

money1

World economy 9th February 2023

Expectations about role of the State may be frustrated by declining spending and decreasing government effectiveness

Agnieszka Gehringer (Flossbach von Storch Research Institute) | Governments are increasingly being given new tasks to achieve various economic policy objectives. Looking at the major eurozone members, this report shows that high expectations about the role of the state in solving the most pressing problems may be frustrated by declining productivity of public spending and decreasing government effectiveness. Public spending in the four large euro area Member States, Germany, France,…

Spanish España.

Spanish economy 23rd September 2022

A Decade Of Fiscal Folly

Fernando González Urbaneja | Both the current and the previous government (Rajoy and Sánchez or Montoro and Montero) have earned a page in Spanish fiscal history with the qualification of a confusing, witty and improvisational period. Both governments commissioned reports from groups of experts for a major tax reform. And both reports, of unquestionable technical quality and with interesting proposals, were buried in the drawer of documents to be forgotten….

french yellow vest

Spanish economy, World economy 8th November 2019

Taxes, the unpopular conundrum

Fernando G. Urbaneja | In France, president Macron, making good arguments, although not explaining them enough, wanted to raise taxes on fuel and millions of citizens forced him to back down. In Ecuador, President Lenin Moreno has gone through such a trance for the same reason. In Chile, President Piñera is on the verge of eviction for the attempt to raise urban transport rates.

euro coins

In Europe 28th March 2019

The Eurozone’s major fiscal stimulus of the decade may arrive not with a common plan but rather through national initiatives

The market has scarcely contemplated the possibility of a major fiscal stimulus in the Eurozone. However, the strategists at Morgan Stanley believe that, after two years marked by a restrictive fiscal policy, we could see the largest fiscal stimulus of the last decade, not through a common plan, but rather through national level initiatives, especially in Germany, France, Italy and Spain.

Olivier Blanchard

World economy 20th April 2015

IMF: The Blanchard Touch

PARIS | April 20, 2015 | By Francesco Saraceno |  Recently I commented on the intriguing box in which the IMF staff challenges one of the tenets of the Washington consensus, the link between labour market reform and economic performance. But the IMF is not new to these reassessments. In fact over the past three years research coming from the fund has increasingly challenged the orthodoxy that still shapes European policy making.

export

World economy 13th October 2014

Export-led economies lose steam

MADRID | By JP Marín Arrese | No need to wait for IMF forecasts. The hasty downfall in oil prices signals a steep deterioration in most export-led economies, ranging from China to Brazil. An upsurge in the US dollar coupled with prospects of more stringent credit conditions, are rapidly changing the global mood towards risk aversion. As hot money flees emerging countries bogging down their investment plans, main suppliers of capital goods such as Germany become increasingly crippled.