The sustainability of fiscal policies in the European Union (original) (raw)

Fiscal Sustainability in the EU

Atlantic Economic Journal, 2018

We assessed the sustainability of fiscal policy in the 28 European Union countries over the 1980-2015 years. Panel unit root tests in the presence of cross-sectional dependence showed that government revenues, expenditures, the primary balance, and debt were non-stationary series. However, cointegration tests reveled that a long-run relationship exists between government revenues and expenditures as well as between government primary deficit and debt. The results of causality tests were in line with the neutrality hypothesis: government revenues do not cause the expenditures, and vice versa. Furthermore, mixture models analyses indicated the presence of three homogeneous clusters, one of which included Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, and Spain (PIIGS), whose coefficient of 0.68 indicates the absence of sustainability, since government expenditures grow faster than revenues.

Fiscal Policy Sustainability: Some Unpleasant European Evidence

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000

The sustainability of fiscal deficits has been receiving increasing attention from economists. The issue is paramount for the newly formed Euro area and this is one of the motivations of the paper. In order to assess the sustainability of budget deficits in the Euro area, stationarity tests for the stock of public debt and co-integration tests between public expenditures and public revenues are performed for the Euro countries for the 1968-1997 period. The empirical results allow us to conclude that fiscal policy may not be sustainable for most countries with the possible exceptions of Germany, Austria and the Netherlands.

Intertemporal sustainability of fiscal policies: some tests for European countries

European Journal of Political Economy, 2002

Fiscal sustainability requires that governments are able to respect the intertemporal budget constraint (IBC) in present value terms. In this paper, we test for sustainability by performing an empirical analysis of cointegration between public expenditures and revenues as ratios of GDP in 11 member states of the European Union during the period 1960 -2000. If cointegration of expenditures and revenues as ratios of GDP is a sufficient condition for sustainability, our results point to the possibility of sustainable budgetary paths in

Fiscal Sustainability in the EU: A Panel Data Diagnostic

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000

ABSTRACT We assess the sustainability of public finances in the EU15 over the period 1970-2006 using stationarity and cointegration analysis. Specifically, we use panel unit root tests of the first and second generation allowing in some cases for structural breaks. We also apply modern panel cointegration techniques developed by Pedroni (1999, 2004), generalized by Banerjee and Carrion-i-Silvestre (2006) and Westerlund and Edgerton (2007), to a structural long-run equation between general government expenditures and revenues. While estimations point to fiscal sustainability being an issue in some countries, fiscal policy was sustainable both for the EU15 panel set, and within sub-periods (1970-1991 and 1992-2006).

What do we really know about fiscal sustainability in the EU? A panel data diagonostic

2007

We assess the sustainability of public finances in the EU15 using stationarity and cointegration analysis. Specifically, we use panel unit root tests of the first and second generation allowing in some cases for structural breaks. We also apply modern panel cointegration techniques developed by Pedroni (1999, 2004), generalized by Banerjee and Carrion-i-Silvestre (2006) and Westerlund and Edgerton (2007), to a structural long-run equation between general government expenditures and revenues. While sustainability may be lacking in individual cases, fiscal policy was overall sustainable both for the EU15 panel set, and within some sub-periods.

What do we really know about fiscal sustainability in the EU? A panel data diagnostic

Review of World Economics, 2010

We assess the sustainability of public finances in the EU15 using stationarity and cointegration analysis. Specifically, we use panel unit root tests of the first and second generation allowing in some cases for structural breaks. We also apply modern panel cointegration techniques developed by , generalized by Banerjee and Carrion-i-Silvestre and , to a structural long-run equation between general government expenditures and revenues. While sustainability may be lacking in individual cases, fiscal policy was overall sustainable both for the EU15 panel set, and within some sub-periods.

Fiscal Sustainability: The Unpleasant European Case

FinanzArchiv, 2005

The sustainability of fiscal deficits has been receiving increasing attention. The issue is paramount for the newly formed euro area and this is one of the motivations of this paper. In order to assess the sustainability of budget deficits, co-integration tests between public expenditures and public revenues, allowing for structural breaks, are performed for the EU countries for the 1970-2003 period. The "unpleasant" empirical results show that with few exceptions fiscal policy may not have been sustainable. EU governments therefore could risk becoming inherently highly indebted, even if the debt-to-GDP ratios seemed to be somehow stabilising at the end of the 1990s. (JEL: H62, H63)

Are EU budget deficits stationary?

Empirical Economics, 2010

In this paper, we test for the stationarity of European Union budget deficits over the period 1971 to 2006, using a panel of thirteen member countries. Our testing strategy addresses two key concerns with regard to unit root panel data testing, namely (i) the presence of cross-sectional dependence among the countries in the panel and (ii) the identification of potential structural breaks that might have occurred at different points in time. To address these concerns, we employ an AR-based bootstrap approach that allows us to test the null hypothesis of joint stationarity with endogenously determined structural breaks. In contrast to the existing literature, we find that the EU countries considered are characterised by fiscal stationarity over the full sample period irrespective of us allowing for structural breaks. This conclusion also holds when analysing sub-periods based on before and after the Maastricht treaty.