We analyse the monetary-fiscal policy mix in post-war Europe, focusing on France and Italy, to trace the historical dynamics of debt and inflation. Using a Markov-switching DSGE model, we identify distinct policy regimes: a Passive Monetary-Active Fiscal (PM/AF) regime before the late 1980s/early 1990s, an Active Monetary-Passive Fiscal (AM/PF) regime associated with central bank independence and EMU convergence, and a third regime marked by the ELB and active fiscal measures aimed at recovery. Simulations reveal that the PM/AF regime in France led to price volatility but stabilised debt, while AM/PF curbed inflation at the cost of rising debt. In contrast, Italy's procyclical fiscal policy in downturns exacerbated imbalances, aggregate volatility, and low growth. We further assess the implications of policy credibility and uncertainty.

We explore the macroeconomic effects of climate policies promoting the green energy transition in the euro area using an extended version of the Euro Area and Global Economy (EAGLE) model. The model differentiates between brown and green energy sectors and incorporates carbon taxes and brown capital income taxes. We analyze scenarios with unilateral and globally coordinated carbon taxes, with and without revenue redistribution to green firms and financially constrained households. Carbon taxes act as negative supply shocks, raising inflation and lowering output, while subsidies to green energy firms reduce green energy prices, supporting the transition and easing recessions. Redistribution to constrained households boosts consumption but does not accelerate the green transition. Taxes on brown capital income lower both inflation and output by acting as demand shocks. Recycling revenue from this tax to subsidize green capital investment strengthens the shift to green energy and moderates economic contractions. Global coordination of carbon taxes delivers only modest additional macroeconomic effects compared to unilateral action, as substitution in energy use outweighs international spillovers. Sensitivity analyses confirm the robustness of these findings under alternative assumptions on price rigidity, substitution elasticities, and monetary policy.

We study the macroeconomic stabilization properties and welfare implications of a centralized fiscal capacity in a New Keynesian model for a two-country monetary union. When fiscal capacity investments respond endogenously and counter-cyclically to the business cycle, they enhance welfare and promote business cycle synchronization across member states. Exogenous fiscal capacity investments that are set up to provide a public good can also provide macroeconomic stabilization, provided they boost productivity and avoid exacerbating macroeconomic imbalances. If they fail to sufficiently enhance productivity, such investments risk aggravating macroeconomic variability. Our findings underscore the importance of the quality of public investments financed by a fiscal capacity under monetary union.

Differences in labour market institutions and regulations between countries of the monetary union can cause divergent responses even to a common shock. We augment a multi-country model of the euro area with search and matching framework that differs across Ricardian and hand-to-mouth households. In this setting, we investigate the implications of cross-country heterogeneity in labour market institutions for the conduct of monetary policy in a monetary union. We compute responses to demand and supply shocks under the Taylor rule, asymmetric unemployment targeting, and average inflation targeting. For each rule we distinguish between cases with lower or higher weight on the unemployment gap. Across all rules, responding to unemployment leads to lower losses of employment. Responding to unemployment reduces cross-country differences within the monetary union and consumption inequality between rich and poor households within each country.

We develop a two-asset Heterogeneous Agent New Keynesian (HANK) model with a rich fiscal block—featuring progressive income taxes, dividend taxes, consumption taxes, and lump-sum transfers—calibrated to U.S. household balance sheet data. We establish three results. First, the choice of financing instrument generates a threefold spread in multipliers: from 0.43 under consumption-tax financing to 1.34 under debt financing with transfer-based repayment, driven by the differential incidence of each instrument on liquidity-constrained households with high marginal propensities to consume. Second, the relationship between fiscal multipliers and the debt-to-GDP ratio is non-monotonic: effectiveness peaks at moderate debt levels and declines with further indebtedness, arising from a nonlinear interaction between a household distribution channel and a portfolio crowding-out channel that neither representative-agent (RANK) nor two-agent (TANK) models can replicate. Third, higher income tax progressivity dampens fiscal effectiveness when spending is financed via transfers, and this dampening intensifies with indebtedness. These findings highlight that the fiscal multiplier is a function of the financing instrument, the prevailing debt level, and the degree of tax progressivity—dimensions that standard models cannot capture.

In the low inflation and low interest rate environment that prevailed over the period 2013-2020, many argued that besides expansionary monetary policy, expansionary fiscal policy could also support central banks’ efforts to bring inflation closer to target. During the pandemic, proper alignment of fiscal and monetary policy was again crucial in promoting a rapid macroeconomic recovery. Since the end of 2021 an environment of higher inflation, lower growth, higher uncertainty, and higher interest rates has changed the nature of the required policy mix and poses different challenges to the interaction between monetary and fiscal policy. Following up on the work done under the ECB’s 2020 strategy review (see Debrun et al., 2021), this report explores some of the renewed challenges to monetary and fiscal policy interactions in an environment of high inflation. The main general conclusion is that, with an independent monetary policy that aims to bring inflation back to target in a timely manner, it is still possible to design fiscal policy in a way that protects vulnerable parts of society against the costs of high inflation without pulling against the central bank’s effort to tame inflation. This is more likely to be the case if fiscal measures are temporary and targeted, and if priority is given to structural reforms and public investment in support of potential growth. The latter is particularly effective in reshaping the supply side of the economy in a manner that is likely to have a lasting positive structural impact.

In most euro area countries, the monetary/fiscal policy mix is responsible for the changing history of debt and inflation facts. Using a Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium model with Markov-switching policy rules, we identify three distinct monetary/fiscal regimes in France and Italy: a Passive Monetary-Active Fiscal regime (PM/AF) before the late 80s/early 90s; an Active Monetary-Passive Fiscal regime (AM/PF) with central bank independence and EMU convergence; a third regime with policy rates at the effective lower bound combined with fiscal active behavior to sustain the recovery. Our simulations reveal that the PM/AF regime in France led to price volatility and debt stabilisation, while the AM/PF regime resulted in disinflation and rising debt trajectory. Meanwhile, Italy’s procyclical fiscal policy in downturns contributed to persisting imbalances, high aggregate volatility, and low growth.

We analyse the COVID-19 pandemic shock on small open economies (SOEs) in the euro area in a unified modelling framework: the Euro Area and the Global Economy model. We find strong negative international spillovers affecting each of the modelled SOEs, stemming not only from the rest of the euro area, but also from the United States and the rest of the world. A lower bound on nominal interest rates in the euro area amplifies these spillovers, especially within the euro area. Furthermore, we find some positive spillovers from the fiscal measures implemented in the Euro area to combat the pandemic, including the new Next Generation EU instrument.

In most Euro Area countries, fiscal and inflation dynamics arise from the history of recurrent monetary and fiscal dominance regimes. We consider France and Italy as illustrative cases for revising price and debt relationship (1955-2019 and 1950-2019, respectively) and estimate a Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium model where monetary/fiscal policy regimes emerge owing to Markov-switching policy rules. We find that fiscal dominance prevailed until the late 80s/early 90s, before switching to monetary dominance driven by central bank independence, fiscal backing and EMU convergence. The effective lower bound combined with a contemporaneous switch into fiscal easing in France, shared by Italy only after consolidating finances under Monti’s government. Simulations for France explain price volatility and debt stabilisation under fiscal dominance, deflation and explosive debt paths under monetary dominance. In Italy, a procyclical fiscal policy in downturns due to limited fiscal space explains the increasing and persisting imbalances, high aggregate volatility and low growth.

We study the stabilization properties and welfare implications of a fiscal capacity in a New Keynesian model for a monetary union. A novel feature of the model is that access to the fiscal capacity is conditional on a country's public debt accumulation being sufficiently low. Likewise, the national fiscal effort to stabilize debt is more ambitious at higher debt levels. We show that the fiscal capacity reduces union-wide macroeconomic variability and raises union-wide welfare by reducing the incidence of regimes with large (pro-cyclical) fiscal consolidations. Welfare gains are higher under greater trade openness and price stickiness.

This paper assesses the potential economic impact of Next Generation EU (NGEU), focusing on the euro area. Its findings suggest that the envisaged national investment and reform plans present a coherent package to support both recovery from the pandemic-induced crisis and longer-term modernisation of the euro area economy through their digital and green transitions. NGEU, however, can only unfold its full potential if all plans are implemented in a timely and effective way. We estimate the impact of the national plans on output, inflation and public debt using ECB staff economic models under the assumption of successful implementation. Specifically, NGEU is expected to take effect through three channels: structural reform, fiscal stimulus and risk premium. Overall, NGEU may increase gross domestic product (GDP) in the euro area by up to 1.5% by 2026, with the impact expected to be significantly larger in the main beneficiary countries. In Italy and Spain, two of the main beneficiaries, the public debt-to-GDP ratio may be more than 10 percentage points lower by 2031. At the same time, all euro area countries are expected to benefit from NGEU through positive spillovers, greater economic resilience and convergence across countries. Finally, the effect of NGEU on euro area inflation over the medium term is deemed to be contained to the extent that the inflationary effect of additional public expenditure is offset, at least to some degree, by the disinflationary effect of greater productive capacity resulting from the planned structural reform and investment measures.

This report discusses the role of the European Union’s full employment objective in the conduct of the ECB’s monetary policy. It first reviews a range of indicators of full employment, highlights the heterogeneity of labour market outcomes within different groups in the population and across countries, and documents the flatness of the Phillips curve in the euro area. In this context, it is stressed that labour market structures and trend labour market outcomes are primarily determined by national economic policies. The report then recalls that, in many circumstances, inflation and employment move together and pursuing price stability is conducive to supporting employment. However, in response to economic shocks that give rise to a temporary trade-off between employment and inflation stabilisation, the ECB’s medium-term orientation in pursuing price stability is shown to provide flexibility to contribute to the achievement of the EU’s full employment objective. Regarding the conduct of monetary policy in a low interest rate environment, model-based simulations suggest that history-dependent policy approaches − which have been proposed to overcome lasting shortfalls of inflation due to the effective lower bound on nominal interest rates by a more persistent policy response to disinflationary shocks − can help to bring employment closer to full employment, even though their effectiveness depends on the strength of the postulated expectations channels. Finally, the importance of employment income and wealth inequality in the transmission of monetary policy strengthens the case for more persistent or forceful easing policies (in pursuit of price stability) when interest rates are constrained by their lower bound.

We simulate a New Keynesian multi-country model of the world economy to assess the macroeconomic effects of US tariffs imposed on one country in the euro area (EA), and the rest of the world (RW). The model is augmented with an endogenous effective lower bound (ELB) on the monetary policy rate of the EA and country-specific labour markets with search-and-matching frictions. Our main results are as follows. First, tariffs produce recessionary effects in each country. Second, if the ELB binds, then the tariff has recessionary effects on the whole EA, even if it is imposed on only one EA country and the RW. Third, if the ELB binds and the real wage is flexible in the EA country subject to the tariff, or if there is sector-specific matching with directed search within each country, then the recessionary effects on the whole EA are amplified in the short run. Fourth, if the elasticity of substitution among tradables is low, then the tariff has recessionary effects on the whole EA also when the ELB does not bind. (c) 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The last review of the ECB's monetary policy strategy in 2003 followed a period of predominantly upside risks to price stability. Experience following the 2008 financial crisis has focused renewed attention on the question of how monetary and fiscal policy should best interact, in particular in an environment of structurally low interest rates and persistent downside risks to price stability. This debate has been further intensified by the economic impact of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. In the euro area, the unique architecture of a monetary union consisting of sovereign Member States, with cross-country heterogeneities and weaknesses in its overall construction, poses important challenges. Against this background, this report revisits monetary-fiscal policy interactions in the euro area from a monetary policy perspective and with a focus on the ramifications for price stability and maintaining central bank independence and credibility. The report consists of three parts. The first chapter presents a conceptual framework for thinking about monetary-fiscal policy interactions, thereby setting the stage for a discussion of specifically euro area aspects and challenges in subsequent parts of the report. In particular, it reviews the main ingredients of the pre-global financial crisis consensus on monetary-fiscal policy interactions and addresses significant new insights and refinements which have gained prominence since 2003. In doing so, the chapter distinguishes between general conceptual aspects – i.e. those aspects that pertain to an environment characterised by a single central bank and a single fiscal authority and those aspects that pertain to an environment characterised by a single central bank and many fiscal authorities (a multi-country monetary union). ...

In response to the economic fallout from the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, the European Council agreed on the Next Generation EU (NGEU) instrument. NGEU allows the European Commission to issue debt to finance grants and loans to EU Member States, with the disbursement of funds intended to be weighted towards the countries most affected by the crisis. This paper assesses the macroeconomic impact on the euro area of different uses of NGEU, using a large dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model of the euro area and global economy (EAGLE) that has been adapted to reflect the modalities of the NGEU instrument. Three uses of NGEU loans and grants are explored: (i) productive public investment, (ii) unproductive government spending, and (iii) replacing or repaying existing sovereign debt. The EAGLE results are cross-checked with a semi-structural model (ECB-BASE) and with the basic model elasticities (BMEs) of the forecasting models in use in the national central banks of the Eurosystem. JEL Classification: C54, E62, E65, F54, F47

The paper reviews the economic risks associated with regimes of high public debt through DSGE model simulations. The large public debt build-up following the 2009 global financial and economic crisis acted as a shock absorber for output, while in the recent and more severe COVID19-crisis, an increase in public debt is even more justified given the nature of the crisis. Yet, once the crisis is over and the recovery firmly sets in, keeping debt at high levels over the medium term is a source of vulnerability in itself. Moreover, in the euro area, where monetary policy focuses on the area-wide aggregate, countries with high levels of indebtedness are poorly equipped to withstand future asymmetric shocks. Using three large scale DSGE models, the simulation results suggest that high-debt economies (1) can lose more output in a crisis, (2) may spend more time at the zero-lower bound, (3) are more heavily affected by spillover effects, (4) face a crowding out of private debt in the short and long run, (5) have less scope for counter-cyclical fiscal policy and (6) are adversely affected in terms of potential (long-term) output, with a significant impairment in case of large sovereign risk premia reaction and use of most distortionary type of taxation to finance the additional debt burden in the future. Going forward, reforms at national level, together with currently planned reforms at the EU level, need to be timely implemented to ensure both risk reduction and risk sharing and to enable high debt economies address their vulnerabilities.