Search results for " DEB"
showing 10 items of 528 documents
The Consequences of Banking Crises for Public Debt
2010
The aim of this paper is to assess the consequences of banking crises for public debt. Using an unbalanced panel of 154 countries from 1980 to 2006, the paper shows that banking crises are associated with a significant and longlasting increase in government debt. The effect is a function of the severity of the crisis. In particular, for severe crises, comparable to the most recent one in terms of output losses, banking crises are followed by a medium-term increase of about 37 percentage points in the government gross debt-to-GDP ratio. In addition, the debt ratio increased more in countries with higher initial gross debt-to-GDP ratio, with a higher share of foreign debt, and with a lower qu…
Sovereign debt spreads in EMU: The time-varying role of fundamentals and market distrust
2017
Abstract This paper provides further analysis on the determinants of sovereign debt spreads for peripheral Eurozone countries since the start of EMU, paying special attention to episodes that characterized the global financial crisis aftermath starting in 2007. More specifically, the purpose of our research is to disentangle the role of fundamental variables and market perception about variations on risk in order to explain the evolution of sovereign spreads in EMU during the recent crisis. Our results, in line with previous literature, show the importance of three groups of observable variables, namely, changes in risk-aversion of creditors, fiscal indebtedness and liquidity variables. In …
How to pay for the debt — Coping with the Third World's crisis
1990
The Brady Plan is the first official proposal to give priority to a tangible reduction in the debtor countries' debt service burden and is thus a milestone along the path towards overcoming the international debt crisis. However, the instruments foreseen in the Plan virtually invite criticism and scepticism. What are the main inadequacies of the Brady Plan? How can the international debt strategy be developed further and made more effective?
Discretionary vs nondiscretionary in fiscal mechanism – non-automatic fiscal stabilisers vs automatic fiscal stabilisers
2015
The goal of the present study is to increase the intelligibility of macroeconomic phenomena triggered by governmental intervention in economy by means of fiscal policies. During cyclical movements, fiscal policy can play an important role in order to help stabilise the economy. But discretionary policy usually implies implementation lags and is not automatically reversed when economic conditions change. In contrast, automatic fiscal stabilisers (SFA) ensure a prompter, and self-correcting fiscal response. The present study aims to tackle the topic of discretionary vs nondiscretionary characteristic of fiscal stabilisers (SF). In this context, the scope of the research undertaking is to laun…
The macroeconomic effects of public investment: Evidence from advanced economies
2015
This paper provides new evidence of the macroeconomic effects of public investment in advanced economies. Using public investment forecast errors to identify the causal effect of government investment in a sample of 17 OECD economies since 1985 and model simulations, the paper finds that increased public investment raises output, both in the short term and in the long term, crowds in private investment, and reduces unemployment. Several factors shape the macroeconomic effects of public investment. When there is economic slack and monetary accommodation, demand effects are stronger, and the public-debt-to-GDP ratio may actually decline. Public investment is also more effective in boosting ou…
Structural reforms in a debt overhang
2014
We assess the effects of reforms in product and labor markets in a model economy featuring credit restrictions and pre-existing long-term debt. Both elements, which are core features of the current scenario faced by some euro area countries, combine to produce a slow and protracted deleveraging of the private sector and a persistent recession following a negative financial shock. In this environment, we show that product and labor market reforms may stimulate output and employment even in the short run, despite their defl ationary effects. Furthermore, by favoring a faster recovery of investment and collateral values, product market reforms bring forward the end of deleveraging and the exit…
FISCAL POLICY, MACROECONOMIC STABILITY AND FINITE HORIZONS
2003
In this paper we analyse the stabilisation properties of distortionary taxes in a New Keynesian model with overlapping generations of finitely-lived consumers. In this framework, government debt is part of net wealth and this adds a number of interesting channels through which fiscal policy could affect output and inflation. Output volatility, in presence of technology shocks, is not substantially affected by the operation of automatic stabilisers but we find interesting composition effects. While the presence of finitely-lived households strengthens the stabilisation performance of distortionary taxes through the reduction of the volatility of consumption, it does so at the cost of more vo…
A wavelet analysis of US fiscal sustainability
2015
Abstract In this paper, we reassess the relationship between primary deficit and lagged debt to GDP ratio (Bohn, 1998), to test for US debt sustainability over the period 1795–2012. Our analysis is rooted in the wavelet domain enabling the detection of interesting patterns and otherwise hidden information. We find evidence of long term fiscal sustainability but only up until 1995 and also we show that governments tend to respond more vigorously to budget deficits when the level of debt is high rather than low.
Fiscal sustainability in the EU: From the short-term risk to the long-term challenge
2015
Abstract The paper analyses fiscal sustainability of public debt using a dynamic computable general equilibrium model. First, we identify the short-term risk for fiscal stress at country level; second, we investigate the assumption of convergence towards the government debt threshold (medium-term challenge); and, third, the requirement that debt projections do not show unsustainable trends (long-term challenge). The empirical implementation includes 18 EU Member States. Our findings show that the constant tax rate that stabilizes the public debt converges to 50 percentage of GDP for all the sample countries and tax revenues are the main driving forces for fiscal sustainability. Also our fin…
Can re-regulation of the financial sector strike back public debt?
2015
This paper analyzes the impact of financial sector policy changes on the dynamics of public debt. Using a panel of 89 countries from 1973 to 2005, we find that while the implementation of (large) financial liberalisation policies significantly raises the public debt growth rate, the adoption of financial re-regulation measures leads to a mild reduction of public debt. Looking at the different typologies of financial sector policy changes, we show that stricter banking supervision, privatisations and restrictions to international capital flows contribute to a fast decline of the growth rate of public debt. In contrast, the removal of entry barriers and the elimination of interest rate contro…