IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/euf/ecopap/0382.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Gauging by numbers: A first attempt to measure the quality of public finances in the EU

Author

Listed:
  • Salvador Barrios
  • Andrea Schaechter

Abstract

Ensuring high quality of public finances (QPF) with a view to supporting long-term economic growth has gained new urgency as the room for fiscal manoeuvre has shrunk in light of the current crisis. To more systematically analyse QPF and compare developments across countries and over time, a greater focus on identifying and developing comparable QPF indicators is needed. This paper provides a first attempt in this respect. Based on the view that QPF is a multi-dimensional concept, it creates composite indicators for twelve areas of public finances that are linked to long-term economic growth. While the proposed alternative calculation methods yield relatively robust results and findings are in line with conventional wisdom, due to data problems the composite indicators should only be seen as a useful starting point for identifying a country's main strengths and weaknesses in QPF. This would need to be complemented by qualitative analysis that also accounts for country and other specificities. JEL classification: E62, H11, H50, H52, H60

Suggested Citation

  • Salvador Barrios & Andrea Schaechter, 2009. "Gauging by numbers: A first attempt to measure the quality of public finances in the EU," European Economy - Economic Papers 2008 - 2015 382, Directorate General Economic and Financial Affairs (DG ECFIN), European Commission.
    • Handle: RePEc:euf:ecopap:0382
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ec.europa.eu/economy_finance/publications/pages/publication15781_en.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Slawomir Franek & Marta Postula, 2020. "Does Eurozone Membership Strengthen the Significance of Fiscal Instruments?," Annals of Economics and Finance, Society for AEF, vol. 21(1), pages 131-151, May.
    2. World Bank, 2011. "Europe 2020," World Bank Publications - Reports 27381, The World Bank Group.
    3. Hans Pitlik & Margit Schratzenstaller, 2011. "Growth Implications of Structure and Size of Public Sectors," WIFO Working Papers 404, WIFO.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Quality of public finances; public finances; fiscal policy; long-term economic growth; public expenditure; public revenue; fiscal governance; Barrios; Schaechter;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E62 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - Fiscal Policy; Modern Monetary Theory
    • H11 - Public Economics - - Structure and Scope of Government - - - Structure and Scope of Government
    • H50 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - General
    • H52 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Government Expenditures and Education
    • H60 - Public Economics - - National Budget, Deficit, and Debt - - - General

    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:euf:ecopap:0382. 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: ECFIN INFO (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dg2ecbe.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.