Was treibt den (Miss-)Erfolg von Schuldenbremsen?

During the past two decades, the Swiss cantons and the federation have reduced their fiscal deficits and partly also their debts. Very often, the introduction of so-called «debt brakes» is held responsible for this development. However, the various debt brakes vary considerably which raises the question as to what makes these fiscal rules actually effective. In order to shed light on this question, the economics literature usually quantifies the specific rules according to their «strength» and then shows that «strength» of rules and fiscal discipline are associated. Our contribution argues that the standard in the literature is flawed and leads to meaningless interpretations. Based on two alternative methods, we demonstrate that the fiscal rules can be very flexible without impairing their overarching goals. Therefore, more attention should be paid as to why legislative and executive branches of the government do actually obey these rules although they could find ways around them.