Search results for "Fiscal union"

New Modes of Regulation for Health and Safety: Post-Enlargement Policy Perspectives for the European Union

2006

The recent joining of ten new member states to the European Union, eight of which are former communist countries, has reopened inherent tensions in current European Union (EU) policy-making on safety and health in the workplace. These spring from seemingly incompatible objectives; the need to ensure broad EU member state compliance with regulation, around agreed minimum standards through active regulatory enforcement, and the promotion of “softer” voluntary initiatives in the management of workplace risks and hazards in order to create “a culture of prevention.” The present EU strategy which ends in 2006, seeks to secure a balance between both sets of objectives. However, with respect to t…

Does politics matter in the conduct of fiscal policy? Political determinants of the fiscal sustainability: Evidence from seven individual Central and…

2007

This paper aims at assessing the fiscal sustainability and its political determinants in seven Central and Eastern European Countries (CEEC), namely Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovenia, Slovakia and the Czech Republic. First, using the recent sustainability approach of Bohn (1998) based on fiscal reaction function, econometric findings using Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) reveal a positive response of the primary surplus to changes in debt in several countries. In other words, fiscal policy is sustainable in Baltic countries, Slovenia and Slovakia, but not in Poland and in the Czech Republic. Second, by introducing political dummy variables, we test the electoral budget cycle and the…

FISCAL POLICY AND ASSET PRICES

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. As a result, the attempts of fiscal policy to mitigate stock price developments may severely de-stabilize housing markets. The empirical findings also point to: (i) a contractionary effect of fiscal policy on output in line with the existence of crowding-out effects; (ii) a weakening of the effectiveness of fiscal p…

Financial Integration and Fiscal Policy

2011

The aim of this paper is to assess the impact of financial integration on fiscal policy. Using an unbalanced panel of 31 OECD countries from 1970 to 2009, the paper shows that financial integration has significant disciplinary effects by reducing fiscal deficits and (discretionary) spending volatility. In addition, we find that financial integration affects the composition of government debt and enhances risk-sharing by increasing the share of foreign debt to the total. The results are robust to both de jure and de facto measures of financial integration, different measures of budget balance, and different estimation strategies.

How does fiscal consolidation impact on income inequality?

2012

In this paper, we assess the impact of fiscal consolidation on income inequality. Using a panel of 18 industrialized countries from 1978 to 2009, we find that income inequality significantly rises during periods of fiscal consolidation. In addition, while fiscal policy that is driven by spending cuts seems to be detrimental for income distribution, tax hikes seem to have an equalizing effect. We also show that the size of the fiscal consolidation program (in percentage of GDP) has an impact on income inequality. In particular, when consolidation plans represent a small share of GDP, the income gap widens, suggesting that the burden associated with the effort affects disproportionately house…

Fiscal visibility in the european union member countries: New estimates

1998

Improvements in the efficient allocation of resources can be reached by increasing public revenue and expenditure visibility. This paper presents some indicators permitting the making of time and space fiscal visibility measurements and comparisons and advances new systematic estimates on fiscal visibility for systems and subsystems of public revenue now in force in the European Union member countries. Policy implications seem straightforward for these countries as present revenue visibility values are low in general. Allocation improvements could be obtained by implementing changes and reforms aiming to raise values of public revenue visibility and to make domestic fiscal systems and subsy…

Fiscal and regulatory federalism in the European Union

1995

This contribution summarizes some quantitative results and presents relevant policy-oriented conclusions obtained from research program No. PBS91-0363. It is mainly supported by the Inter-ministerial Committee on Science and Technology of the Spanish government, which was carried out at the Public Finance and Public Sector Economics Research Unit of University of Valencia (Spain) to analyze, from a fiscal and regulatory point of view, the dynamic characteristics of federalism in the European Union. The research was performed in order to contribute to the establishment of the basis for the acceleration of the economic European integration and the future constitution of the United States of E…

Fiscal visibility in the U.S. and the European Union

2001

Assessing Long-Term Fiscal Developments: A New Approach

2009

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 - we are able to infer about the sources of fiscal behaviour. 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. In this way we track fiscal developments, i.e. possible fiscal deteriorations and/or improvements for eight European Union countries plus the US. Results suggest that positions have not significantly changed for Finland, France, Germany, Spain, the United Kingdom and the US,…

Deficit sustainability and inflation in EMU: An analysis from the Fiscal Theory of the Price Level

2007

Price determination theory typically focuses on the role of monetary policy, while the role of fiscal policy is usually neglected. From a different point of view, the Fiscal Theory of the Price Level takes into account monetary and fiscal policy interactions and assumes that fiscal policy may determine the price level, even if monetary authorities pursue an inflation targeting strategy. In this paper we try to test empirically whether the time path of the government budget in EMU countries would have affected price level determination. Our results point to the sustainability of fiscal policy in all the EMU countries but Finland, although no firm conclusions can be drawn about the prevalence…