The focus of this volume is on the European context of public budget policy and a variety of different approaches are used - theoretical modelling, econometrics and applied general equilibrium modelling. Empirical evidence and case studies of European countries are contained in all the papers.
The papers cover the four general themes of public budget policy:
* economic stabilization, in view of the Economic and Monetary Union in the European Community
* reinforcing structural change, involved in market liberalization and harmonization of economic structures
* its distributional effects and implications for social equity
* endogenous economic growth.

Climate technology becomes more and more relevant in international environmental policy negotiations. At the Kyoto conference binding emission reduction targets have been established for several regions of the world. The major challenge is how to realize these reduction goals with minimum costs without generating new distributional and social difficulties. The book analyses the macroeconomic structural and distributional impacts of greenhouse gas mitigation strategies for the EU and the member states.

This book provides a synthesis of the energy-related results of the large scale project entitled "Climate Teclmology Strategy within Competitive Energy Markets" partly financed by the European Commission under the Non Nuclear Energy (JOULE III) EU-RTD programme (Contract JOS3-CT95-0008). Research in this project involved several organisations from almost all European Union member states, including: ICCS/NTUA (co-ordinator), CES/KULeuven, GRETA Associati, University of Mannheim/ZEW, ESD Ltd., IEPE/CNRS, IDEI, IPTS/JRC, UCL/CORE, SSE/EFI, KFA/STE, ENSPM-FIICEG, University of Strathclyde, IER/University of Stuttgart, YTT, ETSU, IIASA/ECS, ERASME/CCIP, ECOSIM Cons. Ltd., OME, BPB, CRES. In relation of the "pre-and post-Kyoto" context for Climate Change and also with th respect to the preparation of the y EU-RTD Framework Programme, a large exploitation ofthe results is being made. Huguette Laval of the European Commission, DGXII, was the project scientific officer. With Pierre Yalette, Head of the Unit in DGXII, they have given fruitful I advices for the project. Thanks are given to them.