Search results for "E62"
showing 10 items of 29 documents
Effects of Fiscal Stimulus in Structural Models
2010
The paper assesses, using seven structural models used heavily by policymaking institutions, the effectiveness of temporary fiscal stimulus. Models can, more easily than empirical studies, account for differences between fiscal instruments, for differences between structural characteristics of the economy, and for monetary-fiscal policy interactions. Findings are: (i) There is substantial agreement across models on the sizes of fiscal multipliers. (ii) The sizes of spending and targeted transfers multipliers are large. (iii) Fiscal policy is most effective if it has some persistence and if monetary policy accommodates it. (iv) The perception of permanent fiscal stimulus leads to significant…
National fiscal consolidations and regional inequality in Europe
2016
Using annual data for 13 European countries over the period 1980-2008, we assess the impact of national fiscal consolidations on the income inequality of European regions. Regional dispersion increases in the outcome of consolidation episodes, particularly, when packages are more severe and implemented through spending cuts rather than tax rises. From a policy perspective, these findings suggest that fiscal consolidations driven by reductions in government spending can exacerbate regional disparities and may ultimately counteract the European policy efforts to promote territorial cohesion. Our results are robust to alternative inequality measures, the occurrence of crisis episodes and the e…
Searching for Threshold Effects in the Evolution of Budget Deficits: An Application to the Spanish Case
2004
Abstract In this paper, we use recent developments on threshold autoregressive (TAR) models that allow us to derive endogenously threshold effects in the evolution of the Spanish budget deficit. Specifically, a mean-reverting dynamic behaviour of the budget deficit should be expected once such threshold is reached.
Assessing long-term fiscal developments : a new approach
2011
We use a new approach to assess long-term fiscal developments. By analyzing the time-varying behaviour of the two components of government spending and revenue – responsiveness and persistence–, a feature not captured by automatic stabilisers, we are able to infer about the sources of fiscal deterioration (improvement). Drawing on quarterly data, we estimate recursively these components within a system of government revenue and spending equations using a Three-Stage Least Square method for eight European Union countries plus the US. The results suggest that significant changes in the fiscal stance (including those related to the current crisis) are reflected in the estimates of persistence …
Fiscal Devaluations in EMU
2013
2013SummaryWe use a small open economy general equilibrium model to analyse the effects of a fiscal devalua-tion in an EMU country. The model has been calibrated for the Spanish economy, which is a goodexample of the advantages of a change in the tax mix given that its tax system shows a positive biasin the ratio of social security contributions over consumption taxes. The preliminary empirical evi-dence for European countries shows that this bias was negatively correlated with the current accountbalance in the expansionary years leading up to the 2009 crisis, a period when many EMU membersaccumulated large external imbalances. Our simulation results point to significant positive effects of…
Can fiscal decentralization alleviate government consumption volatility?
2016
We analyse how fiscal decentralization affects the volatility of government consumption extending the existing literature that mainly deals with the effects of the former on government size. Using data for 97 developed and developing countries from 1971 to 2010, we find that a higher degree of fiscal decentralization leads to lower government consumption volatility. This result holds for the sub-sample of advanced economies, while it is not confirmed for those less-developed. This mechanism seems to work mainly through a lower volatility of the non-discretionary spending, which typically belongs to the central government’s policy. We also confirm existing findings according to which country…
What determines the duration of a fiscal consolidation program?
2013
This paper assesses the determinants of the length of fiscal consolidation using annual data for 17 industrial countries over the period 1978-2009. Relying on a narrative approach to identify fiscal consolidation episodes, we show that fiscal variables (such as the budget deficit and the level of public debt) and economic factors (such as the degree of openness, the inflation rate, the interest rate and per capita GDP) are crucial for the fiscal consolidation process. Additionally, we employ duration analysis over a set of consolidation spells and find that, as time goes by, the likelihood of a fiscal consolidation ending is higher. However, the hazard function is not monotonic: indeed, it …
Can fiscal policy stimulus boost economic recovery
2011
We assess the role played by fiscal policy in explaining the dynamics of asset markets. Using a panel of ten industrialized countries, we show that a positive fiscal shock has a negative impact in both stock and housing prices. However, while stock prices immediately adjust to the shock and the effect of fiscal policy is temporary, housing prices gradually and persistently fall. Consequently, the attempts of fiscal policy to mitigate stock price developments (e.g. via taxes on capital gains) may severely de-stabilize housing markets. The empirical findings also point to significant fiscal multiplier effects in the context of severe housing busts, which gives rise to the importance of the im…
Average Tax Rate Cyclicality in OECD Countries: A Test of Three Fiscal Policy Theories
2011
This paper investigates the cyclical properties of the average effective tax rate in 26 OECD countries over 1965-2003 in order to test the validity of three theories of fiscal policy: (i) the standard Keynesian theory which recommends that tax policy should be counter-cyclical, (ii) the Tax Smoothing hypothesis, which implies that changes in GDP should be uncorrelated with tax rates, and (iii) the positive theory of Battaglini and Coate (2008) which predicts that the average tax rate should be negatively correlated with GDP. Our main finding is that the correlations of tax rates with cyclical GDP are generally quite small and statistically indistinguishable from zero. This finding is quite …
Growing Like Germany: Local Public Debt, Local Banks, Low Private Investment
2021
The paper uses a panel of more than 1m German firms over 2010-2016, to provide the first firm-bank level evidence of local crowding out for a developed economy characterized by low interest rates and fiscal austerity. Our mechanism relies on two structural features of Germany's banking landscape: the local segmentation of credit markets for small and medium-sized firms (SME) and the role of local public banks in local public finance. Local public banks dominate lending to small and medium firms in Germany and also have an explicit mandate to lend to the local public sector. With spreads on local government debt at all-time lows, local public banks tried to break even, using their market pow…