Advanced Search
MyIDEAS: Login

What Are Their Words Worth? Political Plans And Economic Pains Of Fiscal Consolidations In New EU Member States

Contents:

Author Info

Abstract

In this paper, we track behaviour of fiscal authorities of the ten new EU member states (NSM) in the period which immediately preceded their EU accession. We first present basic stylized facts about public budgets of those countries. The paper then analyses reasons which led to periods of fiscal consolidations in NMS. Secondly, we also present evidence from Pre-Accession Economic and Convergence programmes of NMSs concerning planed steps of fiscal authorities and try to contrast them with reality. Throughout the paper, we identify two different groups of countries which significantly differ in their fiscal behaviour. On the one side is group of Baltic countries displaying strong reform effort and responsible fiscal policy usually supported by strong economic growth. On the second extreme, we identify fiscally irresponsible central European countries and two Mediterranean islands displaying lax fiscal policies and little political will to implement costly reforms. Somewhere between stand Slovenia and Slovakia, first without strong reform performance yet with budget deficit in compliance with Stability and Growth Pact and later for its recent reform efforts. Our key finding concerning behaviour of fiscally irresponsible group of countries is that their current problems with high budget deficits originate in their lax approach and inability to implement politically costly expenditure cuts which is apparent from their revision of budget plans and endeavour to shift envisioned deficit reduction into the future. Yet, this strategy has led those countries to uncomfortable position vis-a-vis European fiscal rules.

Download Info

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
File URL: http://ies.fsv.cuni.cz/default/file/download/id/3034
Download Restriction: no

Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by Charles University Prague, Faculty of Social Sciences, Institute of Economic Studies in its series Working Papers IES with number 2006/13.

as in new window
Length: 27 pages
Date of creation: Jun 2006
Date of revision: Jun 2006
Handle: RePEc:fau:wpaper:wp2006_13

Contact details of provider:
Postal: Opletalova 26, CZ-110 00 Prague
Phone: +420 2 222112330
Fax: +420 2 22112304
Email:
Web page: http://ies.fsv.cuni.cz/
More information through EDIRC

Related research

Keywords: fiscal policy; new member states; consolidations; Stability and Growth Pact; Excessive Deficit Procedure; Convergence Programmes banking;

Other versions of this item:

Find related papers by JEL classification:

This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

References

References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
as in new window
  1. Rolf Strauch & Mark Hallerberg & Jürgen von Hagen, 2004. "Budgetary forecasts in Europe - the track record of stability and convergence programmes," Working Paper Series 307, European Central Bank.
  2. Orban, Gabor & Szapary, Gyorgy, 2004. "The Stability and Growth Pact from the perspective of the new member states," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 26(7), pages 839-864, October.
  3. Ondrej Schneider & Jan Zápal, 2005. "Fiscal Policy in New EU Member States – Go East, Prudent Man!," CESifo Working Paper Series 1486, CESifo Group Munich.
  4. Roubini, Nouriel & Sachs, Jeffrey D., 1989. "Political and economic determinants of budget deficits in the industrial democracies," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 33(5), pages 903-933, May.
  5. repec:fth:eeccco:148 is not listed on IDEAS
  6. Martin Gregor, 2004. "Governing Fiscal Commons in the Enlarged EU," Working Papers IES 56, Charles University Prague, Faculty of Social Sciences, Institute of Economic Studies, revised 2004.
  7. Jürgen von Hagen & Andrew Hughes Hallett & Rolf Strauch, 2001. "Budgetary Consolidation in EMU," European Economy - Economic Papers 148, Directorate General Economic and Monetary Affairs (DG ECFIN), European Commission.
Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

Citations

Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
as in new window

Cited by:
  1. Dybczak, Kamil & Melecky, Martin, 2012. "EU Fiscal Stance Vulnerability: Are the Old Members the Gold Members?," MPRA Paper 42837, University Library of Munich, Germany.

Lists

This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.

Statistics

Access and download statistics

Corrections

When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:fau:wpaper:wp2006_13

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Lenka Herrmannova).

If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.

If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.

If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.