IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/bfr/banfra/386.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Why have governments succeeded in reducing French public debt historically and can these successes inspired us for the future? An historical perspective since 1890

Author

Listed:
  • Gilles Dufr not
  • Triki, K.

Abstract

The question of reducing public debt is at the heart of the current debates in France where the level of debt ratio amounted to 86% of the GDP in 2011. In this paper, we examine how the primary balance, the GDP growth rate, the real interest rate and the inflation rate have influenced the evolution of the debt ratio since the end of the 19th century. We use a methodology based on both historical and empirical analysis. Our aim is to explain why some years, the interest rate, the economic growth, the fiscal policy have helped in making public debt low, while they did not during other periods. Which historical events explained such differences? Our purpose is to think about scenarios of exit of the current French debt crisis making comparisons with the past.

Suggested Citation

  • Gilles Dufr not & Triki, K., 2012. "Why have governments succeeded in reducing French public debt historically and can these successes inspired us for the future? An historical perspective since 1890," Working papers 386, Banque de France.
    • Handle: RePEc:bfr:banfra:386
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://publications.banque-france.fr/sites/default/files/medias/documents/working-paper_386_2012.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Henning Bohn, "undated". "Budget Balance Through Revenue or Spending Adjustments ? Some Historical Evidence for the United States (Reprint 013)," Rodney L. White Center for Financial Research Working Papers 03-91, Wharton School Rodney L. White Center for Financial Research.
    2. Carmen M. Reinhart & Kenneth S. Rogoff, 2009. "Varieties of Crises and Their Dates," Introductory Chapters, in: This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly, Princeton University Press.
    3. Ehrmann, Michael & Ellison, Martin & Valla, Natacha, 2003. "Regime-dependent impulse response functions in a Markov-switching vector autoregression model," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 78(3), pages 295-299, March.
    4. Bohn, Henning, 1991. "Budget balance through revenue or spending adjustments? : Some historical evidence for the United States," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 27(3), pages 333-359, June.
    5. Mauricio Drelichman & Hans-Joachim Voth, 2008. "Debt Sustainability in Historical Perspective: The Role of Fiscal Repression," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 6(2-3), pages 657-667, 04-05.
    6. repec:rnp:ecopol:09111 is not listed on IDEAS
    7. Gilles Dufr not & Triki, K., 2012. "Public debt ratio and its determinants in France since 1890 Does econometrics support the historical evidence?," Working papers 385, Banque de France.
    8. Alessandro Turrini, 2008. "Fiscal policy and the cycle in the Euro Area: The role of government revenue and expenditure," European Economy - Economic Papers 2008 - 2015 323, Directorate General Economic and Financial Affairs (DG ECFIN), European Commission.
    9. S M Ali Abbas & Nazim Belhocine & Asmaa El-Ganainy & Mark Horton, 2011. "Historical Patterns and Dynamics of Public Debt—Evidence From a New Database," IMF Economic Review, Palgrave Macmillan;International Monetary Fund, vol. 59(4), pages 717-742, November.
    10. Eichengreen, Barry, 1988. "Resolving Debt Crises: An Historical Perspective," CEPR Discussion Papers 239, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    11. Barro, Robert J., 1987. "Government spending, interest rates, prices, and budget deficits in the United Kingdom, 1701-1918," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 20(2), pages 221-247, September.
    12. Ritschl, Albrecht, 1996. "Sustainability of High Public Debt: What the Historical Record Shows," CEPR Discussion Papers 1357, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    13. Prati, Alessandro, 1991. "Poincare's stabilization : Stopping a run on government debt," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 27(2), pages 213-239, April.
    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


    Cited by:

    1. Jean Barthélemy & Magali Marx, 2012. "Generalizing the Taylor Principle: New Comment," SciencePo Working papers hal-03461113, HAL.
    2. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/3bvs8clr5k9dqqcbq7j5ul2o65 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. repec:spo:wpmain:info:hdl:2441/3bvs8clr5k9dqqcbq7j5ul2o65 is not listed on IDEAS
    4. Jean Barthélemy & Magali Marx, 2012. "Generalizing the Taylor Principle: New Comment," Working Papers hal-03461113, HAL.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Casalin, Fabrizio & Dia, Enzo & Hughes Hallett, Andrew, 2020. "Public debt dynamics with tax revenue constraints," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 90(C), pages 501-515.
    2. António Afonso & João Jalles, 2014. "A longer-run perspective on fiscal sustainability," Empirica, Springer;Austrian Institute for Economic Research;Austrian Economic Association, vol. 41(4), pages 821-847, November.
    3. Mr. Barry J. Eichengreen & Ms. Asmaa A ElGanainy & Rui Pedro Esteves & Kris James Mitchener, 2019. "Public Debt Through the Ages," IMF Working Papers 2019/006, International Monetary Fund.
    4. Kriwoluzky, Alexander, 2012. "Pre-announcement and timing: The effects of a government expenditure shock," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 56(3), pages 373-388.
    5. Silvana Bartoletto & Bruno Chiarini & Elisabetta Marzano, 2012. "The Sustainability of Fiscal Policy in Italy: A Long-Term Perspective," CESifo Working Paper Series 3812, CESifo.
    6. Barry Eichengreen & Asmaa El-Ganainy & Rui Esteves & Kris James Mitchener, 2019. "Public Debt Through the Ages," NBER Working Papers 25494, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Plödt, Martin & Reicher, Claire, 2014. "Estimating simple fiscal policy reaction functions for the euro area countries," Kiel Working Papers 1899, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
    8. Cysne, Rubens Penha & Campos, Eduardo Lima, 2019. "Sustainability of the Brazilian public pebt an analysis using multicointegration," FGV EPGE Economics Working Papers (Ensaios Economicos da EPGE) 805, EPGE Brazilian School of Economics and Finance - FGV EPGE (Brazil).
    9. Plödt, Martin & Reicher, Claire A., 2015. "Estimating fiscal policy reaction functions: The role of model specification," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 113-128.
    10. Jaume Ventura & Hans-Joachim Voth, 2015. "Debt into growth: How sovereign debt accelerated the first Industrial Revolution," Economics Working Papers 1483, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra.
    11. A. Phiri, 2019. "Asymmetries in the revenue–expenditure nexus: new evidence from South Africa," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 56(5), pages 1515-1547, May.
    12. Janice Boucher Breuer & John McDermott, 2019. "Debt And Depression," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 37(4), pages 714-730, October.
    13. Stijn Claessens & M. Ayhan Kose, 2013. "Financial Crises: Explanations, Types and Implications," CAMA Working Papers 2013-06, Centre for Applied Macroeconomic Analysis, Crawford School of Public Policy, The Australian National University.
    14. Kevin L. Ross & James E. Payne, 1998. "A Reexamination of Budgetary Disequilibria," Public Finance Review, , vol. 26(1), pages 67-79, January.
    15. Guy Navon, 2006. "Budgetary dynamics in the local authorities in Israel," Israel Economic Review, Bank of Israel, vol. 4(2), pages 19-52.
    16. Gabriella Deborah Legrenzi & Costas Milas, 2010. "Spend-and-Tax Adjustments and the Sustainability of the Government's Intertemporal Budget Constraint," CESifo Working Paper Series 2926, CESifo.
    17. repec:ehl:wpaper:42878 is not listed on IDEAS
    18. Reicher, Claire, 2014. "A set of estimated fiscal rules for a cross-section of countries: Stabilization and consolidation through which instruments?," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 184-198.
    19. Jose Tavares & Rossen Valkanov, 2001. "The neglected effect of fiscal policy on stock and bond returns," Nova SBE Working Paper Series wp413, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Nova School of Business and Economics.
    20. Crespo Cuaresma, Jesus & von Schweinitz, Gregor & Wendt, Katharina, 2019. "On the empirics of reserve requirements and economic growth," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 60(C), pages 253-274.
    21. Kumhof, Michael & Laxton, Douglas & Leigh, Daniel, 2014. "To starve or not to starve the beast?," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 39(PA), pages 1-23.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Debt ratio; France; historical analysis.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • H54 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Infrastructures
    • C4 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods: Special Topics

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:bfr:banfra:386. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc 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 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: Michael brassart (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/bdfgvfr.html .

    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.