IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cai/rferfe/rfe_213_0065.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Fiscal Reaction Functions in the EU: A Tale of “r-g” and Whether it Matters

Author

Listed:
  • António Afonso
  • José Alves
  • João Tovar Jalles

Abstract

We empirically assess fiscal responses for 28 EU countries over the 1995Q1-2021Q2 period. At the same time, we evaluate the importance, for fiscal stance reactions, of notably the difference between economic growth and long-term interest rates. We find a positive response of the primary balance to an increase in government debt for the EU panel, implying an overall Ricardian behaviour. There is also evidence of counter-cyclical fiscal policies having been conducted on average in this geopolitical region. The improvement in the primary balance following increases in the debt-to-GDP ratio gained more relevance in the period after the Global Financial Crisis. Finally, the magnitude of the decrease in the debt-to-GDP ratio following improvements in the primary balance is higher when associated with a positive interest rate-growth rate differential. Such effect disappears for negative interest rate-growth differential. Hence, (r-g) matters, and (r-g)>0 is perceived as a more critical instance.

Suggested Citation

  • António Afonso & José Alves & João Tovar Jalles, 2021. "Fiscal Reaction Functions in the EU: A Tale of “r-g” and Whether it Matters," Revue française d'économie, Presses de Sciences-Po, vol. 0(3), pages 65-101.
    • Handle: RePEc:cai:rferfe:rfe_213_0065
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.cairn.info/load_pdf.php?ID_ARTICLE=RFE_213_0065
    Download Restriction: restricted
    File URL: http://www.cairn.info/revue-francaise-d-economie-2021-3-page-65.htm
    Download Restriction: restricted
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. António Afonso & José Alves & Oļegs Matvejevs & Oļegs Tkačevs, 2023. "Fiscal Sustainability and the Role of Inflation," CESifo Working Paper Series 10843, CESifo.
    2. Karsten Staehr & Oļegs TkaÄ evs & Katri Urke, 2023. "Fiscal performance under inflation and inflation surprises:evidence from fiscal reaction functions for the Euro Area," Bank of Estonia Working Papers wp2023-3, Bank of Estonia, revised 20 Jun 2023.
    3. António Afonso & José Alves & Serena Ionta, 2023. "The effects of monetary policy surprises and fiscal sustainability regimes in the Euro Area," Working Papers REM 2023/0281, ISEG - Lisbon School of Economics and Management, REM, Universidade de Lisboa.
    4. Franc Klaassen, Roel Beetsma and Joao Tovar Jalles, 2023. "How do governments respond to interest rates?," Working Papers REM 2023/0280, ISEG - Lisbon School of Economics and Management, REM, Universidade de Lisboa.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cai:rferfe:rfe_213_0065. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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 RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Jean-Baptiste de Vathaire (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cairn.info/revue-francaise-d-economie.htm .

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.