Suchergebnisse

AbstractIn this paper we estimate the marginal rate of substitution between aggregate per‐capita consumption and per‐capita government expenditure on goods and services using US quarterly data over the period 1953 to 1993. This estimate is an important input to any attempt to assess the overall effectiveness of fiscal policy since it directly affects the size of the fiscal policy multiplier. Other recent consumption studies which incorporate the effects of government expenditure have failed to establish a stable estimate of the marginal rate of substitution. We argue that this failure results from imposing the unrealistic assumption that this parameter is constant. In contrast, we allow the marginal rate of substitution to depend on both the level and composition of government spending.

We present an overview of the dynamics of fiscal aggregates in Bulgaria in the period 1998 to 2014. The paper investigates the cyclical dynamics of budget revenue and expenditure and their major components. Using time series of deflated statistical data we calculate the elasticity of individual revenue and expenditure components to GDP growth – both for the overall period and for the post-crisis years. The major conclusion is that the Bulgarian fiscal aggregates are characterized mainly by procyclical dynamics, with the wages and maintenance expenditures being the least sensitive, and investment – the most sensitive to upturns and downturns in growth. These results can feed into fiscal policy and outline the potential to use public investment as an instrument for macroeconomic stabilization in the country.

This paper analyses the impact of fiscal policy on private investment for a sample of thirty-three LDCs. The paper makes a number of important contributions to the existing empirical literature. Its main contribution is that it is the first attempt to analyse the existence of a non-linear relationship between fiscal policy variables and investment. Moreover, we explicitly focus on different aspects of fiscal policy and their influence on investment, instead of only looking at aggregate fiscal policy variables.

This paper reconsiders the long term effect of fiscal policy on interest rates using a real-time dataset of macroeconomic and fiscal variables in a panel of 17 OECD countries over the period 1989-2009. We show that, after controlling for cross sectional dependence using a Factor Augmented Panel, interest rates are mostly related to global factors. Among domestic fiscal variables, the level of expected public debt mantains a positive correlation with interest rates, while among the global factors, the aggregate monetary and fiscal stance play a quantitatively sizeable role. We then analyze how impulses from the aggregate fiscal stance influence each country's interest rates. We find that these effects are modest in large economies and particularly strong in economies characterized by low initial financial integration, leading the way to a novel interpretation of the divergent behaviour of interest rates in the recent financial crisis.

AbstractThe study employed the accounting approach to fiscal policy consistency to analyse the sustainability of Uganda's fiscal policy. The deficits were calculated from the financing side by considering increases in liabilities of the consolidated government. To assess whether the deficits have been compatible with other macroeconomic targets, the financeable deficit is derived and compared with the calculated actual deficits. The results show that the consolidated deficit is consistent with attainment of target outcomes for other macroeconomic variables, most notably inflation and gross domestic product growth rates. However, the inflation target has been achieved at the cost of an unsustainable domestic debt. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

This paper quantifies the effects of two short-run fiscal policies, a temporary tax cut and a temporary rebate transfer, that are intended to stimulate economic activity. A reduction in income taxation provides immediate incentives to work and save more, raising aggregate output and consumption. A temporary rebate is mostly saved and increases consumption marginally. Both policies improve the overall welfare of households, and the rebate policy especially benefits low-income households. In the long run, however, the debt accumulated to finance the stimulus and a higher tax to service the debt can crowd out capital and reduce output and consumption, causing welfare to deteriorate.

AbstractForecast errors in budgetary variables are frequent. When systematic, they are a source of concern, as they signal misconduct in fiscal policymaking, undermine the government's credibility and compromise long-term fiscal sustainability. This paper analyses the characteristics of fiscal forecasting and implementation errors in Italy usingreal-timedata over the period 1998–2009. Several empirical methods are applied in order to identify the features of policymakers' behaviour in preparing and implementing annual fiscal policy and to discover potential determinants in the formation of the implementation errors. Our results show that implemented budgetary plans systematically fall short one year ahead of ambitious planned adjustments for the main public finance aggregates. Fiscal illusion dominates revenue and GDP forecasting, and preliminary data releases are severely biased estimators of the final data, especially for expenditures. The role of the parliamentary session in driving a severe expenditure drift is confirmed.

"A key issue in current research and policy is the size of fiscal multipliers when the economy is in recession. Using a variety of methods and data sources, we provide three insights. First, using regime-switching models, we estimate effects of tax and spending policies that can vary over the business cycle; we find large differences in the size of fiscal multipliers in recessions and expansions with fiscal policy being considerably more effective in recessions than in expansions. Second, we estimate multipliers for more disaggregate spending variables which behave differently in relation to aggregate fiscal policy shocks, with military spending having the largest multiplier. Third, we show that controlling for predictable components of fiscal shocks tends to increase the size of the multipliers"--National Bureau of Economic Research web site