IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ecb/ecbwps/2002152.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Short-term monitoring of fiscal policy discipline

Author

Listed:
  • Camba-Méndez, Gonzalo
  • Lamo, Ana

Abstract

Under the Maastricht Treaty and the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP) European Union (EU) Member States commit themselves to avoid excessive deficits over 3% of GDP and to pursue the medium-term objective of budgetary positions close to balance or in surplus. The SGP provides also regulation for the surveillance of budgetary positions. An analysis of associated tools is the focus of this paper. In particular, it addresses two open issues in the empirical public finance literature which are crucial for monitoring fiscal policy discipline in the EU. First, the estimation of the structural component of the fiscal balance ratio. Second, the computation, when only annual fiscal data is available, of quarterly budget balance ratios, using relevant information from quarterly measured macroeconomic series. An econometric model that addresses both issues is presented and estimated. Additionally, this modelling framework allows us to answer questions such as: what is the safety margin that will prevent a particular country from reaching with certain probability abudget deficit that breaches the 3% upper bound? JEL Classification: C32, E60, H62

Suggested Citation

  • Camba-Méndez, Gonzalo & Lamo, Ana, 2002. "Short-term monitoring of fiscal policy discipline," Working Paper Series 152, European Central Bank.
    • Handle: RePEc:ecb:ecbwps:2002152
    Note: 337346
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.ecb.europa.eu//pub/pdf/scpwps/ecbwp152.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Blanchard, Olivier Jean & Quah, Danny, 1989. "The Dynamic Effects of Aggregate Demand and Supply Disturbances," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 79(4), pages 655-673, September.
    2. Bruneau, C. & De Bandt, O., 1999. "Fiscal Policy in the Transition to Monetary Union: a Structural VAR Model," Working papers 60, Banque de France.
    3. King, Robert G. & Plosser, Charles I., 1985. "Money, deficits, and inflation," Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 22(1), pages 147-195, January.
    4. John B. Taylor, 2000. "Reassessing Discretionary Fiscal Policy," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 14(3), pages 21-36, Summer.
    5. repec:sae:niesru:v:161:y::i:1:p:84-89 is not listed on IDEAS
    6. Salazar, Eduardo & Smith, Richard & Weale, Martin & Wright, Stephen, 1997. "A Monthly Indicator of GDP," National Institute Economic Review, National Institute of Economic and Social Research, vol. 161, pages 84-89, July.
    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. Matthew B. Canzoneri & Robert E. Cumby & Behzad T. Diba, 2001. "Is the Price Level Determined by the Needs of Fiscal Solvency?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(5), pages 1221-1238, December.
    9. André Sapir & Marco Buti, 1998. "Economic policy in EMU," ULB Institutional Repository 2013/8078, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    10. Thomas Dalsgaard & Alain de Serres, 1999. "Estimating Prudent Budgetary Margins for 11 EU Countries: A Simulated SVAR Model Approach," OECD Economics Department Working Papers 216, OECD Publishing.
    11. Chow, Gregory C & Lin, An-loh, 1971. "Best Linear Unbiased Interpolation, Distribution, and Extrapolation of Time Series by Related Series," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 53(4), pages 372-375, November.
    12. Fernandez, Roque B, 1981. "A Methodological Note on the Estimation of Time Series," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 63(3), pages 471-476, August.
    13. Harvey, A C & Jaeger, A, 1993. "Detrending, Stylized Facts and the Business Cycle," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 8(3), pages 231-247, July-Sept.
    14. Buti, Marco & Franco, Daniele & Ongena, Hedwig, 1998. "Fiscal Discipline and Flexibility in EMU: The Implementation of the Stability and Growth Pact," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited, vol. 14(3), pages 81-97, Autumn.
    15. Herschel I. Grossman, 1982. "The American Fiscal Deficit: Facts and Effects," NBER Working Papers 0934, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    16. Eduardo Salazar & Richard Smith & Martin Weale & Stephen Wright, 1997. "A Monthly Indicator of GDP," National Institute Economic Review, National Institute of Economic and Social Research, vol. 161(1), pages 84-89, July.
    17. Matthew Canzoneri & Behzad Diba, 1999. "The Stability and Growth Pact: A Delicate Balance or an Albatross?," Empirica, Springer;Austrian Institute for Economic Research;Austrian Economic Association, vol. 26(3), pages 241-258, September.
    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. de Groot, Oliver & Holm-Hadulla, Fédéric & Leiner-Killinger, Nadine, 2015. "Cost of borrowing shocks and fiscal adjustment," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 23-48.
    2. Onorante, Luca & Pedregal, Diego J. & Pérez, Javier J. & Signorini, Sara, 2010. "The usefulness of infra-annual government cash budgetary data for fiscal forecasting in the euro area," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 32(1), pages 98-119, January.
    3. Pedregal, Diego J. & Pérez, Javier J., 2010. "Should quarterly government finance statistics be used for fiscal surveillance in Europe?," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 26(4), pages 794-807, October.
    4. MOULIN, Laurent & SALTO, Matteo & SILVESTRINI, Andrea & VEREDAS, David, 2004. "Using intra annual information to forecast the annual state deficits : the case of France," LIDAM Discussion Papers CORE 2004048, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE).
    5. Andrea Silvestrini & Matteo Salto & Laurent Moulin & David Veredas, 2008. "Monitoring and forecasting annual public deficit every month: the case of France," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 34(3), pages 493-524, June.
    6. Cláudia Braz & Paulo Esteves, 2013. "Short-term forecasting of indirect tax revenues: an application for Portugal," Economic Bulletin and Financial Stability Report Articles and Banco de Portugal Economic Studies, Banco de Portugal, Economics and Research Department.
    7. Pérez, Javier J., 2005. "Early-warning tools to forecast general government deficit in the euro area: the role of intra-annual fiscal indicators," Working Paper Series 497, European Central Bank.
    8. Arjocu Ana-Maria & Dronca Alexandru, 2015. "Measuring The Structural Budget Deficit In The European Union," Annals - Economy Series, Constantin Brancusi University, Faculty of Economics, vol. 1, pages 147-153, February.
    9. Perez, Javier J., 2007. "Leading indicators for euro area government deficits," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 23(2), pages 259-275.
    10. Teresa Leal & Javier J. Pérez, 2004. "Monitorización de objetivos fiscales anuales: una aplicación con datos regionales," Economic Working Papers at Centro de Estudios Andaluces E2004/66, Centro de Estudios Andaluces.
    11. Jacopo Cimadomo & Antonello D'Agostino, 2016. "Combining Time Variation and Mixed Frequencies: an Analysis of Government Spending Multipliers in Italy," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 31(7), pages 1276-1290, November.

    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. Gonzalo Camba-Mendez & Ana Lamo, 2004. "Short-term monitoring of fiscal policy discipline," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 19(2), pages 247-265.
    2. Robert Buckle & Kunhong Kim & Julie Tam, 2002. "A structural var approach to estimating budget balance targets," New Zealand Economic Papers, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 36(2), pages 149-175.
    3. Mauro Visaggio, 2004. "Does Stability and Growth Pact Provide an Adequate and Consistent Fiscal Rule?," Macroeconomics 0407008, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Jorg Bibow, 2004. "Fiscal Consolidation: Contrasting Strategies & Lessons From International Experiences," Economics Working Paper Archive wp_400, Levy Economics Institute.
    5. De Bandt, Olivier & Mongelli, Francesco Paolo, 2000. "Convergence of fiscal policies in the euro area," Working Paper Series 20, European Central Bank.
    6. 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.
    7. Elena Gennari & Raffaela Giordano & Sandro Momigliano, 2005. "Dealing with Unexpected Shocks to the Budget," FinanzArchiv: Public Finance Analysis, Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 61(2), pages 201-219, July.
    8. Hess Chung & Troy Davig & Eric M. Leeper, 2007. "Monetary and Fiscal Policy Switching," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 39(4), pages 809-842, June.
    9. Michael J. Artis & Marco Buti, 2000. "‘Close‐to‐Balance or in Surplus’: A Policy‐Maker's Guide to the Implementation of the Stability and Growth Pact," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 38(4), pages 563-591, November.
    10. Leopold Diebalek & Doris Prammer, 2006. "Reform of the Stability and Growth Pact," Monetary Policy & the Economy, Oesterreichische Nationalbank (Austrian Central Bank), issue 1, pages 78-109.
    11. Mateusz Pipień & Sylwia Roszkowska, 2015. "Szacunki kwartalnego PKB w polskich województwach," Gospodarka Narodowa. The Polish Journal of Economics, Warsaw School of Economics, issue 5, pages 145-169.
    12. Jonas D. M. Fisher, 2002. "Technology shocks matter," Working Paper Series WP-02-14, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.
    13. Edoardo Gaffeo & Giuliana Passamani & Roberto Tamborini, 2005. "Fiscal and monetary policy, unfortunate events, and the SGP arithmetics - Evidence from a growth-gaps model," Department of Economics Working Papers 0519, Department of Economics, University of Trento, Italia.
    14. Raffaella Basile & Bruno Chiarini & Elisabetta Marzano, 2011. "Can we Rely upon Fiscal Policy Estimates in Countries with Unreported Production of 15 Per Cent (or more) of GDP?," CESifo Working Paper Series 3521, CESifo.
    15. Loukoianova, E. & Vahey, S.P. & Elizabeth C. Wakerly, 2002. "A Real Time Tax Smoothing Based Fiscal Policy Rule," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 0235, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    16. Marí­n, José M., 2002. "Sustainability of public finances and automatic stabilisation under a rule of budgetary discipline," Working Paper Series 193, European Central Bank.
    17. Ray Barrell & Ian Hurst & Álvaro Pina, 2002. "Fiscal Targets, Automatic Stabilisers and their Effects on Output," Working Papers Department of Economics 2002/05, ISEG - Lisbon School of Economics and Management, Department of Economics, Universidade de Lisboa.
    18. Rasmus Kattai & Alvar Kangur & Martti Randveer, 2003. "Automatic fiscal stabilisers in Estonia: the impact of economic fluctatios on general government budget balance," Bank of Estonia Working Papers 2003-11, Bank of Estonia, revised 10 Oct 2003.
    19. Jorg Scheibe, 2003. "The Chinese Output Gap During the Reform Period 1978-2002," Economics Series Working Papers 179, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    20. Michael J. Artis & Luca Onorante, 2007. "The Economic Importance of Fiscal Rules," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: David Cobham (ed.), The Travails of the Eurozone, chapter 6, pages 123-145, Palgrave Macmillan.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    interpolation; state space modelling; structural deficit ratio;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C32 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Multiple or Simultaneous Equation Models; Multiple Variables - - - Time-Series Models; Dynamic Quantile Regressions; Dynamic Treatment Effect Models; Diffusion Processes; State Space Models
    • E60 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - General
    • H62 - Public Economics - - National Budget, Deficit, and Debt - - - Deficit; Surplus

    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:ecb:ecbwps:2002152. 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: Official Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/emieude.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.