Fiscal decentralization and macroeconomic management

The purpose of this paper is to address a central question in fiscal federalism - whether or not fiscal decentralization implies serious risks for fiscal discipline and macroeconomic management for the nation as a whole. This paper addresses this important issue by drawing upon the existing evidence regarding macro management and fiscal institutions in federal and unitary countries. This is supplemented by cross country regression analysis plus the analysis of two case studies: the Brazilian federation and the unitary regime in China. The main conclusion of the paper is that decentralized fiscal systems offer a greater potential for improved macroeconomic governance than centralized fiscal regimes. This is because the challenges posed by fiscal decentralization are recognized and they shape the design of countervailing institutions in federal countries to overcome adverse incentives associated with incomplete contracts or the “common property” resource management problems or with rent seeking behaviors. JEL Code E6 · H7 · H1     

A modern history of fiscal prudence and profligacy

Drawing on a newly collected historical dataset of fiscal stocks and flows, we analyze the determinants of variation, both across countries and over time, in how fiscal policy responds to increases in the government debt-to-GDP ratio. The fiscal data comprise revenues, primary expenditures, interest bill, and government debt for 55 countries for up to two hundred years. The policy response (increase in the primary fiscal balance in response to debt increases) is found to be significantly weaker when sovereign borrowing costs are low, inflation is high, and potential economic growth worsens unexpectedly. These results are robust to political factors.     

Fiscal Policy,Business Cycles and Economic Stabilisation: Evidence from Industrialised and Developing Countries*

This paper empirically investigates the responsiveness of fiscal policy to business cycles and the effectiveness of fiscal policy in reducing economic fluctuations. From regressions on the responsiveness of fiscal policy to business cycles, we find that the government's current expenditures and subsidies & transfers move counter‐cyclically, whereas taxes and capital expenditures move pro‐cyclically. Using economic fluctuations in neighbouring countries as an instrumental variable, we show that ordinary least squares (OLS) estimates understate the responsiveness of fiscal policy to economic fluctuations. We also find that fiscal policy responds asymmetrically over economic fluctuations. In investigating the effectiveness of fiscal policy in reducing economic fluctuations, we mitigate omitted variable bias by adding four important factors ‐ military expenditures, oil production, economic fluctuations in neighbouring countries and fiscal policy responsiveness to business cycles. The results of effectiveness regressions are consistent with the responsiveness regressions, highlighting the importance of current expenditures, especially subsidies and transfers, in responding to business cycles and stabilising the economy.     

分税与地方财政支出结构

本文研究了税收分成对地方财政支出结构的影响。理论分析发现,在地方政府的财政支出结构竞争中,税收分成比例的提高将直接导致地方政府增加生产性公共支出,发挥生产性支出的产出外部性,提高产出水平和自身税收收入水平,实现福利最大化。一系列经验分析显著地验证了上述结论,即当地级市政府的税收分成率提高10%,该地区生产性支出占比将提高1.39%。本文的分析和结论有助于解释中国地方财政支出结构变动的原因,从而为政府间税收分配改革提供有效的政策建议。     

发达国家和发展中国家财政政策顺周期问题的研究与借鉴

国外关于发达国家和发展中国家财政政策顺周期问题的研究结果表明:(一)发达国家财政政策具有温和的逆周期性,即在经济上升期增加收入、减少支出、在经济下滑期减少收入、增加支出;也有一些研究成果认为发达国家的财政收入、财政支出具有顺周期性。(二)发展中国家财政收入、财政支出等政策变量,在经济上升期,具有快速增长的顺周期性;在经济下滑期,具有快速减少的顺周期性。     

中国财政政策乘数效应分析

财政政策是逆周期宏观调控的重要举措,财政政策乘数高低体现了宏观政策的效果,对政府决策具有重要的参考价值.本文基于IS-LM的拓展模型,估计得到2002-2017年间的财政支出乘数在0.58到0.67之间,税收乘数在-0.22到-0.18之间,私人投资乘数在1.16到1.8之间,财政支出乘数较以往研究有较大的下降,沿用传统的刺激需求政策不可持续.通过对财政支出乘数传导机制的进一步研究发现,财政支出对居民消费的拉动作用在一定程度上被政府投资对消费的挤出效应所抵消,政府投资对私人投资的带动效应也受到财政支出挤出效应的抵消,宽松货币政策的配合可以减少财政支出挤出效应.最后基于分析给出相关政策建议.     

Sovereign risk premia: The link between fiscal rules and stability culture

There is a growing empirical literature studying whether permanent constraints on fiscal policy, such as fiscal rules, reduce sovereign risk premia. Nevertheless, it remains an open question whether these rules are effective genuinely or just because they mirror fiscal preferences of politicians and voters. In our analysis of European bond spreads before the financial crisis, we shed light on this issue by employing several types of stability preference related proxies. These proxies refer to a country's past stability performance, government characteristics and survey results related to general trust. We find evidence that these preference indicators affect sovereign bond spreads and dampen the measurable impact of fiscal rules. Yet, the interaction of stability preferences and rules points to a particular potential of fiscal rules to restore market confidence in countries with a historical lack of stability culture.     

国外促进就业的财政政策及借鉴

面对日益严峻的就业形势，世界各国十分重视发挥财政在促进就业中的作用。本文着重通过考察世界各国在促进就业方面所采取的财政政策， 探讨我国财政应如何在促进就业工作中更好地发挥作用。     

Stress testing the EU fiscal framework

This study evaluates the efficiency of the cyclically-adjusted budget balance (CABB) as the central gauge in the reinforced European fiscal framework for evaluating fiscal discipline. We do this by means of a simulation experiment. We use an estimated DSGE model to simulate all the macroeconomic data needed to assess the CABB according to the official EC methodology. Additionally, the model contains an expenditure fiscal rule that accounts for non-automatic variation in the budget, which allows us to observe the true discretionary measures of fiscal policy. Our results indicate that the EC methodology frequently fails to identify the true fiscal policy stance and also frequently fails to correctly signal potential violations of the SGP limit on structural deficit. In the latter case triggering corrective fiscal contractions to comply with the SGP results in increased macroeconomic instability. In addition, we show that allowing for a bigger role for stability-oriented discretionary policy and thus relaxing the SGP limit on structural deficit could enhance the stabilization efficiency of fiscal policy without reducing the degree of compliance with the Maastricht Treaty. These conclusions apply to small countries in a monetary union as well as large countries with independent monetary policy.     

How big (small?) are fiscal multipliers?

Contributing to the debate on the macroeconomic effects of fiscal stimuli, we show that the impact of government expenditure shocks depends crucially on key country characteristics, such as the level of development, exchange rate regime, openness to trade, and public indebtedness. Based on a novel quarterly dataset of government expenditure in 44 countries, we find that (i) the output effect of an increase in government consumption is larger in industrial than in developing countries; (ii) the fiscal multiplier is relatively large in economies operating under predetermined exchange rates but is zero in economies operating under flexible exchange rates; (iii) fiscal multipliers in open economies are smaller than in closed economies; (iv) fiscal multipliers in high-debt countries are negative.