IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ctl/louvre/1997041.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Budgeetary Policies during Recessions : Retrospective Application of the Stability and Growth Pact” to the Post-War Period

Author

Listed:
  • Marco BUTI

    (Directorate-General For Economic and Financial affairs of the European Commission)

  • Daniele FRANCO

    (Directorate-General For Economic and Financial affairs of the European Commission)

  • Hedwig ONGENA

    (Directorate-General For Economic and Financial affairs of the European Commission)

Abstract

Solid budgetary discipline is an essential condition for the success of Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). The “Excessive Deficit Procedure” and the “Stability and Growth Pact” allow some flexibility for the conduct of budgetary policies during severe economic slowdowns. The paper examines whether European Union Member States will have to change their budgetary policies carried out during and after severe recessions, once these procedures become fully operational in the third stage of EMU. The results of this analysis suggest that when starting from a budgetary position of close – to balance or in surplus, the risk of breaching the 3% reference value is relatively low during one-year recessions but increases in case of deep or protracted recessions. The early years of EMU, when some countries might still have a deficit of about 2% of GDP, are likely to prove highly problematic in the event of a severe recession

Suggested Citation

  • Marco BUTI & Daniele FRANCO & Hedwig ONGENA, 1997. "Budgeetary Policies during Recessions : Retrospective Application of the Stability and Growth Pact” to the Post-War Period," Discussion Papers (REL - Recherches Economiques de Louvain) 1997041, Université catholique de Louvain, Institut de Recherches Economiques et Sociales (IRES).
    • Handle: RePEc:ctl:louvre:1997041
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://sites.uclouvain.be/econ/DP/REL/1997041.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Alberto F. Alesina & Roberto Perotti, 1999. "Budget Deficits and Budget Institutions," NBER Chapters, in: Fiscal Institutions and Fiscal Performance, pages 13-36, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Willi Leibfritz & Deborah Roseveare & Paul van den Noord, 1994. "Fiscal Policy, Government Debt and Economic Performance," OECD Economics Department Working Papers 144, OECD Publishing.
    3. Canova, Fabio, 1998. "Detrending and business cycle facts," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 41(3), pages 475-512, May.
    4. Corsetti, Giancarlo & Roubini, Nouriel, 1996. "European versus American Perspectives on Balanced-Budget Rules," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 86(2), pages 408-413, May.
    5. Tamim Bayoumi & Barry Eichengreen, 1995. "Restraining Yourself: The Implications of Fiscal Rules for Economic Stabilization," IMF Staff Papers, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 42(1), pages 32-48, March.
    6. Olivier Jean Blanchard, 1990. "Suggestions for a New Set of Fiscal Indicators," OECD Economics Department Working Papers 79, OECD Publishing.
    7. Alesina, Alberto & Perotti, Roberto, 1996. "Fiscal Discipline and the Budget Process," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 86(2), pages 401-407, May.
    8. Mr. Domenico Fanizza & Mr. Vito Tanzi, 1995. "Fiscal Deficit and Public Debt in Industrial Countries, 1970-1994," IMF Working Papers 1995/049, International Monetary Fund.
    9. Claude Giorno & Pete Richardson & Deborah Roseveare & Paul van den Noord, 1995. "Estimating Potential Output, Output Gaps and Structural Budget Balances," OECD Economics Department Working Papers 152, OECD Publishing.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Rafal Benecki & Jens Hölscher & Mariusz Jarmuzek, 2006. "Fiscal Transparency and Policy Rules in Poland," CASE Network Studies and Analyses 0327, CASE-Center for Social and Economic Research.
    2. Ali Bayar, 1999. "Entry and Exit Dynamics of 'Excessive Deficits' in the European Union," CESifo Working Paper Series 216, CESifo.
    3. Pierre-Yves Hénin, 1997. "Soutenabilité des déficits et ajustements budgétaires," Revue Économique, Programme National Persée, vol. 48(3), pages 371-395.
    4. Ali BAYAR & Bram SMEETS, 2009. "Excessive Deficits in the European Union: An Analysis of Entry and Exit Dynamics," EcoMod2009 21500011, EcoMod.
    5. Martin Larch & Matteo Salto, 2005. "Fiscal rules, inertia and discretionary fiscal policy," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 37(10), pages 1135-1146.
    6. Veronica Grembi & Tommaso Nannicini & Ugo Troiano, 2011. "Policy Responses to Fiscal Restraints: A Difference-in-Discontinuities Design," Working Papers 397, IGIER (Innocenzo Gasparini Institute for Economic Research), Bocconi University.
    7. Ali Bayar & Bram Smeets, 2009. "Government Deficits in the European Union: An Analysis of Entry and Exit Dynamics," CESifo Working Paper Series 2703, CESifo.
    8. Vlaicu, Razvan & Verhoeven, Marijn & Grigoli, Francesco & Mills, Zachary, 2014. "Multiyear budgets and fiscal performance: Panel data evidence," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 111(C), pages 79-95.
    9. Kiander, Jaakko & Virén, Matti, 2000. "Do automatic stabilisers take care of asymmetric shocks in the euro area?," Discussion Papers 234, VATT Institute for Economic Research.
    10. Maravall, A. & del Rio, A., 2007. "Temporal aggregation, systematic sampling, and the Hodrick-Prescott filter," Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 52(2), pages 975-998, October.
    11. Grech, Aaron George, 2004. "Estimating the output gap for the Maltese economy," MPRA Paper 33663, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    12. Martin Larch & João Nogueira Martins, 2007. "Fiscal indicators - Proceedings of the the Directorate-General for Economic and Financial Affairs Workshop held on 22 September 2006 in Brussels," European Economy - Economic Papers 2008 - 2015 297, Directorate General Economic and Financial Affairs (DG ECFIN), European Commission.
    13. Kaiser, Regina & Maravall, Agustin, 2005. "Combining filter design with model-based filtering (with an application to business-cycle estimation)," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 21(4), pages 691-710.
    14. Mellár, Tamás & Németh, Kristóf, 2018. "A kibocsátási rés becslése többváltozós állapottérmodellekben. Szuperhiszterézis és további empirikus eredmények [Estimating output gap in multivariate state space models. Super-hysteresis and furt," Közgazdasági Szemle (Economic Review - monthly of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences), Közgazdasági Szemle Alapítvány (Economic Review Foundation), vol. 0(6), pages 557-591.
    15. Azzimonti, Marina & Battaglini, Marco & Coate, Stephen, 2016. "The costs and benefits of balanced budget rules: Lessons from a political economy model of fiscal policy," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 136(C), pages 45-61.
    16. Seitz, Helmut, 2000. "Fiscal Policy, Deficits and Politics of Subnational Governments: The Case of the German Laender," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 102(3-4), pages 183-218, March.
    17. Lane, Philip R. & Perotti, Roberto, 2003. "The importance of composition of fiscal policy: evidence from different exchange rate regimes," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(9-10), pages 2253-2279, September.
    18. Gradzewicz, Michal & Kolasa, Marcin, 2004. "Estimating the output gap in the Polish economy: the VECM approach," MPRA Paper 28227, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    19. Marcel, Mario, 2001. "Balance Estructural del Gobierno Central. Metodología y Estimaciones para Chile [Structural Bazlance of Central Government. Methodology and estimates for Chile]," MPRA Paper 43338, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    20. Hauptmeier, Sebastian & Rother, Philipp & Holm-Hadulla, Fédéric, 2010. "The impact of numerical expenditure rules on budgetary discipline over the cycle," Working Paper Series 1169, European Central Bank.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E62 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - Fiscal Policy; Modern Monetary Theory
    • H60 - Public Economics - - National Budget, Deficit, and Debt - - - General

    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:ctl:louvre:1997041. 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: Sebastien SCHILLINGS (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/iruclbe.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.