The fiscal charter media fiasco

The House of Commons passes into law a fiscal charter which enshrines in the short term another period of severe austerity, and thereafter c...

When economists play political games

I saw you talking to those people the other day. You really should think twice before be ing seen to talk to people like that. Similar li...

Going backwards on fiscal rules

I was preoccupied when it first came out, but I wanted to note the excellent discussion by Jonathan Portes of the government’s new fiscal ru...

Cyclically adjusted deficits and instability

Jean Pisani-Ferry, currently advising the French government and former director of Bruegel (the Brussels-based economic think tank) has writ...

Rollercoasters and rules

Chris Giles says today that “there is a gap [between Labour and Conservatives plans] of more than £30bn a year in public spending by the en...

Osborne's RES speech and proposed new fiscal rule

I suppose I should say something about this , even though I find it painful reading his speeches. Not because they are so partisan - what wo...

Why these updated fiscal rules are a backward step

The coalition government in the UK has just updated the fiscal rules that govern how it decides budgetary policy. I think it is helpful to ...

Can we have our instrument back?

This is a rather long post about how one of the instruments of macroeconomic policy has been taken away, and replaced by a fetish about gove...