Does right or left matter? Cabinets, credibility and fiscal adjustments

This paper tests the widely held assumption that left-wing cabinets favor higher public spending and examines whether cabinet ideology affects the persistence of major fiscal adjustments. In a panel of large fiscal adjustments in OECD countries during the last 40 years, we find evidence that left-wing and right-wing cabinets are partisan: the left tends to reduce the deficit by raising tax revenues while the right relies mostly on spending cuts. Our testable hypothesis is that cabinets can signal commitment by undertaking fiscal adjustments in ways that are not favored by their constituencies. In other words, the left gains credibility when it cuts spending while the right becomes more credible when it increases tax revenues. Probit estimates of the determinants of persistence in fiscal adjustments confirm that spending cuts by the left and tax increases by the right are associated with persistent adjustments. The effect is significant for cuts in public spending, public consumption (wage or nonwage), increases in total revenues, direct taxes on businesses and other taxes. We test for the role of several other determinants of persistence, confirming that coalition and majority cabinets are associated with less persistence while periods of high or rising levels of indebtedness favor persistence. The estimates of the impact of ideology and other variables on GDP and its components show that it is the size of the spending cut rather than cabinet ideology that is most important.     

Fiscal consolidations and electoral outcomes in emerging economies: Does the policy mix matter? Macro and micro level evidence from Latin America

Do voters punish governments that introduce fiscal “austerity” measures? If so, does voter response vary according to the composition of fiscal adjustments? The empirical literature on the political economy of fiscal adjustments, which is mostly OECD-based, argues that consolidations do not have significant electoral consequences. In contrast, we find that voters punish fiscal consolidations at the polls in Latin America. To explain this result, we focus on the way fiscal adjustments episodes are implemented, both in terms of their design (taxes vs. spending) and timing. Such episodes rely fundamentally on increasing tax rates and bases of indirect taxes (such as the VAT) that hit broad segments of the population. Moreover, these policies are often implemented when politicians have no choice but to consolidate, that is, under severe economic circumstances. These macro results are corroborated with micro evidence from an original survey experiment that measures voter’s fiscal policy preferences over the business cycle in seven countries across Latin America. The experimental evidence shows that respondents prefer expenditure cuts to tax increases during downturns, which is the opposite of the type of consolidations that countries typically pursue.     

Fiscal consolidation by intergovernmental transfers cuts? The unpleasant effect on expenditure arrears

For the period 2003–2014, we investigate unexplored effects of fiscal consolidation in decentralized public finance on a large dataset of Italian municipalities. Based on a simple, realistic theoretical model, we show that municipalities increase arrears on committed investment expenditure as a response to intergovernmental transfer cuts. Then, we test our predictions controlling for potential sources of endogeneity, and find that a reduction in intergovernmental transfers causes a significant increase in arrears, in addition to other common adjustments to local fiscal policies (e.g., tax revenues). Our results highlight a perverse effect of fiscal consolidation packages implemented by centrally imposed fiscal restraints.     

Inflation and the fiscal limit

We use a rational expectations framework to assess the implications of rising debt in an environment with a “fiscal limit”. The fiscal limit is defined as the point where the government no longer has the ability to finance higher debt levels by increasing taxes, so either an adjustment to fiscal spending or monetary policy must occur to stabilize debt. We give households a joint probability distribution over the various policy adjustments that may occur, as well as over the timing of when the fiscal limit is hit. One policy option that stabilizes debt is a passive monetary policy, which generates a burst of inflation that devalues the existing nominal debt stock. The probability of this outcome places upward pressure on inflation expectations and poses a substantial challenge to a central bank pursuing an inflation target. The distribution of outcomes for the path of future inflation has a fat right tail, revealing that only a small set of outcomes imply dire inflationary scenarios. Avoiding these scenarios, however, requires the fiscal authority to renege on some share of future promised transfers.     

Fiscal decentralization and government size: The role of democracy

This paper examines how the level of democracy in a country affects the relationship between fiscal decentralization and government size. We argue that political regimes, proxied by their democracy levels, are important for different decentralization theories to predict the impact of fiscal decentralization on government size. We test this argument using panel data from 76 developed and developing countries during 1972–2013. We find strong and robust evidence that fiscal decentralization is negatively associated with government size and that a higher level of democracy tends to mitigate the negative impact of fiscal decentralization. Therefore, our study contributes to the literature by offering a novel insight on mixed results regarding the relationship between fiscal decentralization and government size in the literature.     

Are the effects of fiscal policy really nonlinear? A note

Based on a panel data model, Giavazzi, Jappelli and Pagano (2000, European Economic Review 44, 1259–1289) recently found evidence that national saving in OECD countries responds nonlinearly to fiscal policy, the nonlinearity being associated with the size and persistence of the fiscal impulse. The existence of this nonlinearity would have important policy implications because it implies that the short-run costs of a fiscal consolidation program are lower the larger and more persistent it is. However, this paper shows that their finding is not robust, one reason being the inadequacy of the slope homogeneity assumption implicit in their panel model and another reason being their reliance on an implausibly large number of episodes of large and persistent fiscal impulses.     

Independent fiscal councils: Recent trends and performance

Countries increasingly rely on independent fiscal councils to constrain policymakers’ discretion and curb the bias towards excessive deficits and pro-cyclical policies. Since fiscal councils are often recent and heterogeneous across countries, assessing their impact is challenging. Using the latest (2016) vintage of the IMF Fiscal Council Dataset, we focus on two tasks expected to strengthen fiscal performance: the preparation or assessment of forecasts, and the monitoring of compliance with fiscal rules. Tentative econometric evidence suggests that the presence of a fiscal council is associated with more accurate and possibly less optimistic fiscal forecasts, as well as greater compliance with fiscal rules.     

我国财政政策作用机制与经济周期波动的相关性研究

我国积极财政政策在总需求管理过程中起到了重要作用.通过判断我国财政政策工具和财政政策规模与经济周期波动之间的关联,描述结构VAR模型中财政政策的作用和反馈过程,我们发现我国积极财政政策操作过程中体现出了一定程度的相机选择性和对经济周期阶段的依赖性,这意味着在我国经济增长已经出现"软扩张"的经济周期态势下,应当适当调整财政政策的期限结构和政策工具,加强货币政策的组合作用,继续保持积极财政政策对国内产出的作用方向.     

Equitable fiscal consolidations

Empirical research has uncovered an equity-efficiency trade-off in alternative fiscal consolidation strategies. Spending-based adjustments are associated with more limited output losses but greater inequality than tax-based adjustments. Moreover, spending-based adjustments are less likely to be reversed, but an increase in inequality reduces the likelihood of achieving a successful consolidation. We investigate the issue of designing a debt consolidation plan which is achieved through a reduction in public consumption and yet is equitable because temporary targeted transfers and tax reductions stabilize consumption of the poorer part of the population. This causes a limited slow-down in the pace of debt reduction because fiscal multipliers associated to the tax/transfer policies are large.     

Fiscal stabilizations: When do they work and why

This paper studies the determinants and channels through which fiscal contractions influence the dynamics of the debt-to-GDP ratio and GDP growth. Using data from a panel of OECD countries, the paper shows that the success of fiscal adjustments in decreasing the debt-to-GDP ratio depends on the size of the fiscal contraction and less on its composition. The rate of growth of output matters too, but higher GDP growth does not drive the success of a fiscal stabilization. In contrast, whether a fiscal adjustment is expansionary depends largely on the composition of the fiscal maneuvre. In particular, stabilizations implemented by cutting public spending lead to higher GDP growth rates. The effects of the composition on growth work mostly through the labor market rather than through agents’ expectations of future fiscal policy. Finally, the evidence suggests that successful and expansionary fiscal contractions are not the result of accompanying expansionary monetary policy or exchange rate devaluations.     

Fiscal policy in the US: Sustainable after all?

The sustainability of US public debt has been widely discussed since the Great Recession. Using annual data since 1940, we estimate and compare different specifications of fiscal rules. Estimates of constant-parameter fiscal rules show no evidence of sustainability. This may be due to the instability of government's behaviour over time. Thus, we estimate a Markov-switching fiscal rule in order to identify periods of unsustainable and sustainable fiscal policies. First, we show that the government stabilizes public debt only periodically. Second, during these periods, the government's reaction is sufficiently tight to stabilize public debt over the entire horizon. We conclude that a relatively short-lived but tight fiscal contraction can be sufficient to ensure long-run US debt sustainability.     

Income distribution,fiscal policy,and delays in stabilization

This paper presents an explanation of the cycles of large fiscal expansions and macroeconomic stabilizations that are frequently observed in developing countries. In the model, different coalitions form and change depending on the position of three groups over the degree of redistribution and the timing of debt repayment. I show that seemingly unsustainable fiscal policies arise from a coalition of the poor and the rich when the distribution of income is highly unequal. When income is distributed more equally, instead, the patterns of fiscal policy and of the trade balance are consistent with the standard predictions of representative agent models. These features of the model seem consistent with available empirical evidence.     

What do we know about fiscal sustainability across Indian states?

This study examines fiscal sustainability using Indian state-level data from 1980-81 to 2017-18. The results, derived from cointegration and dynamic ordinary least squares techniques, show strong fiscal sustainability for the majority of states. Our results also confirm that northern, western, and southern states are more fiscally sustainable as compared to eastern states. Further, we find fiscal sustainability for both revenue and capital accounts. Moreover, political alignment does not affect fiscal sustainability, except in a few states. From a policy perspective, state governments need to revisit their expenditure patterns to minimize non-developmental expenditure, particularly for those states with weak sustainability.     

Non-linear budgetary policies: Evidence from 150 years of Italian public finance

We investigate the sustainability of Italy’s public finances from 1862 to 2012 adopting a non-linear perspective. Specifically, we employ the smooth transition regression approach to explore the scope for non-linear fiscal adjustments of primary surpluses in response to the accumulation of debt. The empirical results show the occurrence of a significantly positive reaction of primary surpluses to debt when the debt–GDP ratio exceeded the trigger value of 110 percent. The after-threshold positive response implies that the path of Italy’s fiscal policy is sufficiently consistent with the intertemporal budget constraint.     

中国财政供养人口规模膨胀的影响因素与结构偏向

文章运用中国财政供养总人口与行政、事业部分的分列供养人口的省级面板数据,通过动态面板模型和系统GMM估计方法,考察了中国财政供养人口规模的影响因素。研究表明,经济发展水平、人均本级财政收入、公共服务需求对整体财政供养人口规模有正的影响,而人口规模、人均转移支付和对外开放程度的增加对整体财政供养人口规模会有抑制作用。同时,地方政府内在的行为动机可能会造成行政部分财政供养人口规模的过度膨胀和事业部分财政供养人口规模的相对下降。     

The political economy of fiscal procyclicality

It is well-recognized that fiscal spending in developing countries tends to display significant procyclicality (increased spending during expansions and vice versa), in contravention of rational stabilization policy. Theoretical explanations have relied on either financial access or political-economic factors to justify this phenomenon. In this paper, we model the fiscal-output relationship as a dcc-garch process, and inquire whether debt or political economy constraints play a comparatively more important role in conditioning this correlation. Our evidence favors a positive effect from political economy, with weaker and more mixed results pertaining to financial access. Somewhat surprisingly, we also find that politics-induced procyclicality appears to be driven by advanced economies, and fiscal rules exacerbate procyclical tendencies.     

财政集权过程中的转移支付和财政供养人口规模膨胀

结合财政分权的理论文献,本文描述了中国最近10多年来政府间财政关系的演变,并分析了财政集权过程中转移支付增加对地方财政供养人口的影响。利用中国1994—2003年县级面板数据和工具变量方法,我们从实证角度确立了转移支付增加与财政供养人口规模膨胀的因果关系,并指出在我国目前的政府管理体制下,上级政府面临着无论增加哪种转移支付都可能带来问题的两难处境。要在控制政府冗员增长的同时促进公共服务的有效提供,中国需要建立一个财政上更加分权和行政管理上更有基层参与性的政府管理体制。     

Fiscal adjustments and asset price changes

This paper examines the links between asset price movements and fiscal adjustments. Our findings suggest that higher asset prices improve fiscal balances and contribute to sustained consolidation. This refers in particular to real equity and real residential property prices. We find evidence that revenue windfalls due to higher residential, commercial property and equity prices can be sustained, thus, improving revenue and primary balances. There is evidence of a positive association of some asset prices changes with expenditure adjustments. Fiscal adjustments and in particular sharp spending cuts are more likely to be successful if undertaken in periods of dire budgetary and economic conditions.     

The colonial origins of fiscal capacity: Evidence from patronage governors

We combine historical personnel data from the British colonial administration with modern public finance data to study the impact of colonial governors on fiscal capacity. Exploiting rule-based variation in the allocation of governors connected to their superior at the time of appointment, we find that modern-day countries exposed to more patronage governors exhibit lower fiscal capacity today. These negative effects are persistent over time and driven by indirect taxes that patronage governors disproportionately controlled in the colonial period. The results thus provide evidence for a public finance channel through which the effects of patronage appointments extend beyond decolonization.     

Fiscal Policy in Real Time*

In this paper, I estimate the ex ante or intentional cyclical stance of fiscal policy in OECD countries. I use the fiscal plans reported at the time of budgeting, together with other information available to fiscal policy‐makers in real time. Indeed, fiscal plans might be significantly different from ex post outcomes because governments do not have complete control over their implementation, which is influenced by several exogenous factors. When fiscal‐policy rules are estimated using real‐time data, I show in this paper that OECD countries have often planned a counter‐cyclical fiscal stance, especially during economic expansions. This contrasts with conventional findings based on actual data, which tend to point towards a‐cyclicality or pro‐cyclicality. Forecast errors for the government structural balance and the output gap play a central role in explaining the differences between estimates based on ex ante and ex post data.