New tools to assess fiscal and financial vulnerabilities in advanced economies.

Summary This introduction presents a selection of articles dealing with the issue of measuring the fiscal and financial vulnerabilities in the advanced economies. These articles were presented at a conference organized jointly by the Banque de France and BETA in Strasbourg on 13–14 September. The authors show that the improvement of macroeconomic toolkit goes hand in hand with the strengthening of fiscal frameworks and the tools for managing financial tensions. They propose several indicators in order to capture the variety of vulnerabilities observed in the industrialized countries since the recent great depression: funding needs, market perceptions risks, stress dependence among sovereigns and the reactions of governments to cope with these new challenges.