The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of counter-cyclical fiscal policies and FDI inflows on macroeconomic stabilization in the selected Euro area countries. Performing a panel data analysis for 9 economies over the timespan 1980-2014 and, using a Pooled Mean Group estimator, it was shown that a counter-cyclical fiscal policy, associated with a lower tax burden during turbulent economic times, contributes to the reduction of output volatility. At the same time, increased FDI inflows positively influence the macroeconomic stabilization. In addition, a reduced volatility of investment inflows has a positive impact on the economic growth stabilization, but this result is sensitive to the way the tax burden is calculated. In a nutshell, the findings show that, in the long-run, authorities should resort to counter-cyclical fiscal policies and encourage FDI inflows to stabilize the economy and, thus, reduce the amplitude of business cycles.

Direct tax revenues vary significantly, in the percentage of GDP, in selected countries. This difference is coming for various reasons. Our aim in this paper is to emphasize that there is a vital argumentation which is put forward to explain these variations, called cultural diversity. We employ a panel data with 46 selected countries and using the Materialist/Postmaterialist 12-item index; we highlight the impact of this postmaterialist index on direct tax revenues. Our study comprises six waves, and it includes the most recent dataset regarding culture dimension, namely World Values Survey Wave 7 (2017-2020). Moreover, we control for country characteristics and endogeneity issues. The results show that the degree of postmaterialism explains the level of direct tax revenues. The findings are robust when we include environmental taxes. These results highlight that cultural attitudes should be considered when studying the level of direct tax revenues and how culture dynamics impact taxation.

We estimate, using a Panel Vector Autoregressive approach and data from 2001Q1 to 2017Q1, the fiscal multipliers of the European Union (EU) members and candidates. These countries are grouped according to their stages of integration: original members, new Eurozone members, and candidates for the Eurozone and the EU itself. For each group, we assess the impact of a positive spending shock (expansionary) or a positive tax shock (contractionary) on GDP. Our findings suggest that: (i) rising government spending increases GDP in both the EU and Eurozone candidates (Keynesian multipliers), but slightly decreases it in the Eurozone members (non-Keynesian multipliers); (ii) higher taxes are associated with mixed results in terms of GDP dynamics -both increases and decreases in terms of GDP are found -in the four country groups (suggesting the presence of Keynesian and non-Keynesian multipliers). Overall, these outcomes indicate that spending multipliers are, compared to tax multipliers, more sensitive to European Union or Eurozone membership.