The dynamic linkages of fiscal and current account deficits: New evidence from five highly indebted European countries accounting for regime shifts and asymmetries

This article provides new empirical evidence on the long-term relationship between the fiscal and current account imbalances, of five European economies under financial market pressure and insolvency; Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain. We attempt to re-evaluate the dynamic linkages between the twin-deficits allowing for the presence of structural breaks and asymmetries. The evidence is in favor of the “twin deficits hypothesis”. More insight is further provided through the magnitude and significance of the asymmetric linkages between the twin deficits in the long-run time horizon. Our findings indicate that fiscal deficit decreases have a greater impact on the current account deficit rather than the opposite.     

The dynamic effects of monetary policy and government spending shocks on unemployment in the peripheral Euro area countries

In this paper we study the response of unemployment to monetary policy and government spending shocks in the peripheral Euro-area countries. By applying the structural near-VAR methodology, we jointly model area-wide and national variables. Our main finding is that fiscal multipliers vary across countries and the results are consistent with the prediction of the standard New Keynesian model only in Italy and Greece. Instead, in Ireland, Portugal and Spain increases in government spending are recessionary. Thus we find that Keynesian results of fiscal policy seem to prevail in high public-debt countries, whereas non-Keynesian outcomes seem to characterize high private-debt countries. As for the monetary policy shock, we find that it plays an important role, jointly with the other area-wide shocks, as a long-term driver of national unemployment.     

Fiscal and External Deficits Nexus in GIIPS Countries: Evidence from Parametric and Nonparametric Causality Tests

International Advances in Economic Research - This paper investigates the relationship between fiscal and external deficits in five European Union countries (Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, and...     

Effects of government spending on private investment

This paper investigates the effects of military and non-military public expenditures on gross private investment using cointegration and error-correction analysis. The latter type of public spending is disagreggated into expenditures of infrastructure, consumption and other general government expenditures. The empirical evidence from four emerging European countries namely, Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain suggests that in some cases public capital spending stimulates investment, while in others it depresses it. Also, the results tentatively indicate that defence spending exerts no influence on private investment, thus adding to the ongoing controversy of the economic effects of military spending.     

Revisiting the redistribution effects of intergovernmental fiscal transfers: evidence from Taiwan

This paper employs a panel of 23 local governments in Taiwan over 1998–2010 to re-estimate the redistribution effects of intergovernmental fiscal transfers by considering a self-financing resources of local government as the transition variable in panel smooth transition regression models. Empirical results show that the income (or tax revenues) redistribution effects of fiscal transfer policies are nonlinear and vary with time and across local governments. The grants from central government can improve income and tax revenues distribution of local governments; however, the centrally allotted tax revenues have inverse effects and the total fiscal transfers have ambiguous effects. The total fiscal transfer is a proper policy instrument for improving income redistribution, and the grants for improving tax revenues redistribution. However, high self-financing resources ratios are harmful for these redistribution effects.     

Achieving the triple dividend in Portugal: a dynamic general-equilibrium evaluation of a carbon tax indexed to emissions trading

Using a dynamic general equilibrium model, we simulate the environmental, economic, and budgetary effects in Portugal of a new carbon tax indexed to the carbon price in the European Union’s Emissions Trading System market. Through careful recycling of the carbon tax revenues to finance lower personal income taxes, lower Social Security contributions, and higher investment tax credits – in particular when changes are directed at promoting energy efficiency – we show that it is possible to design a carbon tax reform that boosts economic growth and strengthens fiscal consolidation. These results served as the basis for a new carbon tax eventually approved by the Portuguese Parliament.     

Fiscal harmonization in the European Union with public inputs

Fiscal harmonization among the European Union member states is a goal involving major difficulties for its implementation. Each country faces a particular trade-off between fiscal revenues generated by taxation and the productive efficiency loss induced by their respective tax code. This paper provides a quantitative analysis of these trade-offs for a number of the European Union (EU-15) member states using a dynamic general equilibrium model with public inputs. Calibration of the model for the EU-15 member states provides the following results: i) the maximum tax revenue level is relatively far from the current tax levels for most countries; ii) the cases of Sweden, Denmark and Finland are anomalous, as productive efficiency can be gained by lowering tax rates without affecting fiscal revenues; iii) in general, countries would obtain efficiency gains without changing fiscal revenues by reducing the capital tax and increasing the labor tax; and iv) capital tax harmonization to the average capital tax rate can be done with quite small changes in both fiscal revenues and output for most countries.     

Technology spillover effects and economic integration: evidence from integrating EU countries

The article uses time series for the period 1981–2008 to estimate the impact of foreign technology spillover effects on Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain, representing the integrating European Union (EU) countries. I restrict technology diffusion to EU-12 countries and compare the results to unrestricted technology diffusion from a sample of 32 OECD countries. Accounting for nonstationarity and co-integration, the dynamic OLS estimator is used to estimate the impact of foreign R&D stock on labour productivity, taking into account patent-, trade- and FDI-related technology diffusion channels. I find empirical evidence for trade-related foreign technology spillover effects for Greece and Ireland if technology diffusion is unrestricted. Restricting technology diffusion to EU-12 countries, there are significant foreign technology spillover effects from European integration for Portugal (patent related) and Spain (trade and FDI related). Moreover, the domestic R&D stock and education are significant drivers for labour productivity in integrating EU countries. The empirical results are robust for different regression specifications and sources of technology diffusion.     

Panel data modelling and the tax-spend controversy in the euro zone

This article attempts to differentiate between the debatable tax and spend, spend and tax, fiscal synchronization and institutional separation hypotheses in order to explore empirically the interplay between public expenditures and public revenues in the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) member states. For this purpose, panel data models are derived to test the validity of the four hypotheses in EMU countries. A notable characteristic of this article is that the four hypotheses are tested by dividing EMU countries into various subgroups and using disaggregated data for government expenditures and revenues. Seeking for the robustness of the empirical evidence, the panel data methods of Generalized Two-Stage Least Squares (GTSLS) and Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) are accordingly applied to identify the relationship between public outlays and taxation receipts. GTSLS and GMM results strongly support the fiscal synchronization hypothesis implying that budget decision-making is significantly influenced by both government expenditures and revenues components.     

Government spending and revenues in Sweden 1722–2011: evidence from hidden cointegration

This study examines the long-run causal relationship between government revenues and spending of the Swedish economy over the period 1722–2011. The results based on hidden cointegration technique and a modified version of the Granger non-causality test, show that there exists a long-run and asymmetric relationship between government spending and government revenues. Our estimation results can be summarized into three main empirical findings. First, the government follows a hard budget constraint and soft budget constraint strategies in the case of negative and positive shocks, respectively. Second, negative shocks to the fiscal budget are removed fairly quickly compared to positive shocks. Third, bi-directional causality between revenues and expenditures offers support in favor of the fiscal synchronization hypothesis. The policy implication is that budget deficit’s reduction could be achieved through government spending cut, accompanied by contemporaneous tax controls.     

The trade-off between risk and incentives in fiscal federalism: Evidence from China

A central argument of the second-generation fiscal federalism literature is that allocating a considerable share of tax revenue to local governments can provide fiscal incentives for local officials to promote economic growth. However, increasing incentives will increase the costs of uncertainty if local government officials are risk averse. Building on the insights of the classic principal-agent models, we predict that the optimal share of tax revenues retained by local government will decrease as the uncertainty of total tax revenues increases. Using Chinese provincial data, we find a robust negative relationship between volatility and the tax-sharing ratio at the sub-provincial level. Our results indicate that optimal decentralization in developing countries balances the trade-off between risk and incentives.     

政府间财政转移支付、激励效应与 地方税收收入体系

如何维护地方税收体系的有效性，始终是财政分权化改革的核心。本文以我国县级财政实践为基础，系统考察了政府间财政转移支付的税收激励作用及其在维护地方税收体系有效性方面的作用。研究表明，我国省级以下财政转移支付在税收激励方面并不成功，未能在促进县级地方税收收入增加、维护县级地方税收体系有效性方面发挥积极作用，2002年所得税分享改革以来东部地区表现得尤为突出。专项转移支付具有良好的激励作用，有利于县级地方税收收入特别是营业税和增值税共享收入的增加，税收返还和财力性转移支付均不利于县级地方税收收入增加。     

Seigniorage and EMU : The fiscal implications of price stability and financial market integration

Disinflation, especially if coupled with financial market liberalisation, has implications for public finances because it lowers the revenue from the inflation tax. There might thus be a trade-off between the criteria on inflation convergence and public finances that were set at Maastricht. This paper measures the effects of lower inflation and financial market integration on the revenue from seigniorage for the EC member countries that have in the past relied most heavily on this source of revenues. The main result is that disinflation alone will reduce the revenue from seigniorage by over 2% of GDP in Greece, but much less than 1% of GDP in the other countries considered here. The overall impact of EMU (i.e. disinflation plus financial market integration) is a loss of seigniorage revenues of 2.9% of GDP in Greece and a little over 1% of GDP in Portugal and Spain. Two different measures of seigniorage yield similar results regarding the overall change, but differ regarding the transitional period and the level.     

Banking solvency determinants in the EU: a model based on stress tests

Using a multilevel regression model, this article aims to find determinants of banking solvency in the European Union. The endogenous variable is defined as the capital ratio determined by stress tests. Both internal (financial ratios and sovereign debt exposures) and external (macroeconomic indicators) variables are proposed as covariates. The results reveal that capitalization, earnings, assets structure and exposure to PIIGS (Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain) sovereign debt are significant among the former, and economic growth, interest and exchange rates, and real estate prices among the latter.     

欧债危机后发达国家税制改革趋势及对中国的启示

欧债危机后,发达国家依靠紧缩的财政政策来弥补巨大的财政赤字和政府债务,各国也进入到了增税周期。发达国家通过强化税制公平、开征银行税、为中小企业和创新企业减税和加强征管的方法来增加税收收入。经济全球化下中国应顺应世界税制改革的趋势,借鉴成功经验完善中国的税收制度。同时一国的宏观经济形势是税制改革的基础,任何税制改革都不应脱离本国的实际情况。     

Investment scaling up and the role of government

This article studies the fiscal and welfare implications of a scaling up of public investment when the government is subject to inefficiencies on the spending and on the tax collection side. In our simulations, the scaling up of public investments results in higher long-run output and consumption levels but requires a fiscal stabilization package in order to preserve fiscal sustainability. The effects on consumers’ welfare after the fiscal adjustment are nontrivial. Our welfare analysis shows that consumers’ welfare is increased when the government smooths the fiscal adjustment via higher borrowing and not through an increase in taxation. Moreover, the comparison between several stabilization packages via tax adjustment shows that higher welfare is achieved when the government relies mostly on taxation of capital as this allows higher levels of consumption. Lower fiscal costs that do not undermine fiscal sustainability can however be achieved if the government manages to reduce inefficiency in tax collection. Finally, we consider a change in the trade regime that causes a decline in revenues. We find that the higher fiscal burden required to preserve fiscal sustainability would completely wipe out the welfare gain of higher public investments.     

Effects of Eurobonds: A stochastic sovereign debt sustainability analysis for Portugal,Ireland and Greece

This paper assesses the impact of Eurobonds on sovereign debt dynamics for selected European member states (Greece, Ireland and Portugal). For each member state, we produce sovereign debt fan charts of (i) a baseline scenario (no Eurobonds) and (ii) a Full-Fledged Eurobond introduction. The key building blocks of our methodology are (i) a debt framework (which embeds the traditional recursive debt equation), (ii) a vector autoregressive model to take into account and parametrise macroeconomic uncertainty and (iii) a fiscal reaction function. Conditional on the absence of moral hazard, we find Eurobonds to be a good instrument to absorb macroeconomic shocks and to diminish uncertainty over future debt forecasts; for Ireland and Portugal, we find debt to be 20 percentage points lower than under our baseline scenario, by 2020.     

A macrotheoretic analysis of inflation,taxes, and the price of equity

This paper examines the effects of higher inflation on asset prices via the impact on effective tax rates. The problem is addressed in a full macroeconomic context where explicit attention is paid to the government budget constraint. The analysis shows that the magnitude of the inflationary impact on asset prices varies significantly according to the nature of the government's fiscal response to changes in tax revenues generated by more inflation; in particular, by whether increased inflation revenues are met by an equal increase in public expenditures or by commensurate reductions in other tax parameters which keep total revenues constant.     

Monetary policy and fiscal limits with no-default

This paper discusses monetary and fiscal policy interactions that stabilize government debt. Two distortions prevail in the model economy: income taxes and liquidity constraints. Possible obstructions to fiscal policy include a ceiling on the equilibrium debt-to-GDP ratio, zero or negative elasticity of tax revenues, and a political intolerance of raising tax rates. At the fiscal limit two mechanisms restore solvency: fiscal inflation, which reduces the real value of nominal debt, and open market operations, which diminish the size of government debt held by the private sector. Three regimes achieve this goal. In all regimes monetary policy is passive. In all regimes a muted tax response to government debt is consistent with equilibrium. The propensity of a fiscal authority to smooth output is found to determine what is an acceptable response (in the form of tax rate changes) to the level of government debt, while monetary policy determines the timing and magnitude of fiscal inflation. Impulse responses show that the inflation and tax hikes needed to offset a permanent shock to transfers are lowest under nominal interest rate pegs. In this regime, most of the reduction in the real value of government debt comes from open market purchases.     

The polarization impact of the crisis on the Eurozone labour markets: a hierarchical cluster analysis

This study assesses the impact of the Great Recession (2008–2014) on the process of integration of the Eurozone labour markets. Through an agglomerative hierarchical cluster analysis using several European labour market harmonized indicators, we find that the crisis led to a greater integration, and to a polarization within the area. In the aftermath of crisis, two groups of countries clearly emerged, consisting Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg and Netherlands in the core while Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain in the periphery.