Peter Claeys

Background

About Peter Claeys

I am at present Permanent Professor at the Department of European Economic Studies of the College of Europe. I previously worked as an Associate Professor at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, and at the Universitat de Barcelona as an assistant professor, after having done a Marie Curie Fellowship at AQR-IREA for two years after getting my PhD in Economics from the European University Institute in 2006. I am mainly working as macro-econometrician on modelling various aspects of fiscal policy, using several empirical tools for testing models of fiscal policy coming from (international) macroeconomics, finance, monetary economics or I/O models. My research focuses on two specific areas in fiscal policy. In a first research line, I analyse the economic effects of fiscal consolidation on households’ consumption and saving choices when public and private debt constraints bite. The feedback effect of fiscal consolidation – given consumer preferences for redistribution – may modify the response of governments to cyclical developments, and render fiscal policy procyclical, with negative effects on economic stability and long-term growth. A second research line focuses on the effects of economic and financial integration on fiscal policy. In particular, I develop new measures of spillover between sovereign bond markets and fiscal policies, and then more generally looks at the implications of monetary union on fiscal relations between different tiers of government.