IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ihs/ihsesp/80.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Public Debt and Generational Balance in Austria Lueth, Erik; Raffelhueschen, Bernd

Author

Listed:
  • Keuschnigg, Christian

    (Institute of Public Finance, University of Saarland, Saarbruecken)

  • Keuschnigg, Mirela

    (Saarbrücken)

  • Koman, Reinhard

    (Institute for Advanced Studies, Vienna)

Abstract

Based on Austria's fiscal stance in 1995, we compute the generational accounts for currently living as well as future generations. The results reveal the existence of an enormous intergenerational imbalance in favor of currently living generations. Total public sector liabilities may be more than five times as high as the officially recorded level of public debt. Without any action, future generations would face life-time net taxes that are about 65 percent higher than the tax burden of a current newborn. If the government could fully and permanently retain the expenditure cutting and revenue raising effects of the 1996 fiscal consolidation package and the 1997 pension reform, then it might be able to significantly reduce the intergenerational liabilities. However, enacting both the recent tax reform 2000 and the reform of the family support scheme would increase again the fiscal imbalance and intergenerational inequity of fiscal policy in Austria.

Suggested Citation

  • Keuschnigg, Christian & Keuschnigg, Mirela & Koman, Reinhard, 2000. "Public Debt and Generational Balance in Austria Lueth, Erik; Raffelhueschen, Bernd," Economics Series 80, Institute for Advanced Studies.
    • Handle: RePEc:ihs:ihsesp:80
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://irihs.ihs.ac.at/id/eprint/1255
    File Function: First version, 2000
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Diamond, Peter, 1996. "Generational Accounts and Generational Balance: An Assessment," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 49(4), pages 597-607, December.
    2. Alan J. Auerbach & Jagadeesh Gokhale & Laurence J. Kotlikoff, 1991. "Generational Accounts: A Meaningful Alternative to Deficit Accounting," NBER Chapters, in: Tax Policy and the Economy, Volume 5, pages 55-110, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Genser, Bernd & Holzmann, Robert, 1994. "Die österreichische Finanzpolitik vor dem EU-Beitritt," Discussion Papers, Series II 243, University of Konstanz, Collaborative Research Centre (SFB) 178 "Internationalization of the Economy".
    4. Diamond, Peter, 1996. "Generational Accounts and Generational Balance: An Assessment," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association, vol. 49(4), pages 597-607, December.
    5. Gerhard Lehner, 1998. "Bund setzt Konsolidierung fort," WIFO Monatsberichte (monthly reports), WIFO, vol. 71(5), pages 349-363, May.
    6. Manfred Koch & Christian Thimann, 1999. "From Generosity to Sustainability: The Austrian Pension System and Options for its Reform," Empirica, Springer;Austrian Institute for Economic Research;Austrian Economic Association, vol. 26(1), pages 21-38, March.
    7. Alan J. Auerbach & Jagadeesh Gokhale & Laurence J. Kotlikoff, 1994. "Generational Accounting: A Meaningful Way to Evaluate Fiscal Policy," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 8(1), pages 73-94, Winter.
    8. Jagadeesh Gokhale & Bernd Raffelhüschen, 2000. "Population Aging and Fiscal Policy in Europe and the United States," CESifo Working Paper Series 237, CESifo.
    9. Robert Haveman, 1994. "Should Generational Accounts Replace Public Budgets and Deficits?," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 8(1), pages 95-111, Winter.
    10. Keuschnigg, Christian, 1994. "Dynamic tax incidence and intergenerationally neutral reform," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 38(2), pages 343-366, February.
    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. Michael Ben-Gad, 2013. "Public Deficit Bias and Immigration," 2013 Meeting Papers 21, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    2. Berger, Johannes & Graf, Nikolaus & Strohner, Ludwig & Schuh, Ulrich, 2013. "Ein Schulden-Check für Österreich," Policy Notes 5, EcoAustria – Institute for Economic Research.
    3. Joze Sambt & Alexia Prskawetz, 2011. "National Transfer Accounts for Austria: low levels of education and the generosity of the social security system," Chapters, in: Ronald Lee & Andrew Mason (ed.), Population Aging and the Generational Economy, chapter 11, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    4. Berger, Johannes & Graf, Nikolaus & Strohner, Ludwig & Thomas, Tobias, 2018. "Nachhaltig oder nicht? Österreichs Staatsfinanzen im Schulden-Check," Policy Notes 26, EcoAustria – Institute for Economic Research.
    5. Berger, Johannes & Strohner, Ludwig & Thomas, Tobias, 2018. "Reformszenarien für eine nachhaltige Finanzierung des österreichischen Pensionssystems," Policy Notes 23, EcoAustria – Institute for Economic Research.
    6. Berger, Johannes & Graf, Nikolaus & Strohner, Ludwig & Thomas, Tobias, 2018. "Pflegefinanzierung in Österreich: Nachhaltigkeit und Reformoptionen," Policy Notes 25, EcoAustria – Institute for Economic Research.
    7. Berger, Johannes & Strohner, Ludwig & Thomas, Tobias, 2019. "Keine Zeit für mangelnde Budgetdisziplin: Analyse der Effekte von Ausgabensteigerungen, Arbeitsmarkt und Zins auf die Nachhaltigkeit der öffentlichen Finanzen," Policy Notes 37, EcoAustria – Institute for Economic Research.

    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. Christian Keuschnigg & Mirela Keuschnigg & Reinhard Koman & Erik Lüth & Bernd Raffelüschen, 2000. "Public Debt and Generational Balance in Austria," Empirica, Springer;Austrian Institute for Economic Research;Austrian Economic Association, vol. 27(3), pages 225-252, September.
    2. A. Bovenberg & Harry Rele, 2000. "Generational Accounts for The Netherlands: An Update," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 7(4), pages 411-430, August.
    3. 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.
    4. Kotlikoff, Laurence J., 2002. "Generational policy," Handbook of Public Economics, in: A. J. Auerbach & M. Feldstein (ed.), Handbook of Public Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 27, pages 1873-1932, Elsevier.
    5. Siebert, Horst, 1997. "Pay-as-you-go versus capital funded pension systems: the issues," Kiel Working Papers 816, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
    6. Otto Gandenberger, 2000. "Is the Fiscal Deficit Misconceived? Proponents of Generational Accounting Overstate their Case," CESifo Working Paper Series 282, CESifo.
    7. Bonin, Holger, 2001. "Fiskalische Effekte der Zuwanderung nach Deutschland - Eine Generationenbilanz," IZA Discussion Papers 305, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    8. Hsieh, Kevin Yu-Ching & Tung, An-Chi, 2016. "Taiwan’s National Pension Program: A remedy for rapid population aging?," The Journal of the Economics of Ageing, Elsevier, vol. 8(C), pages 52-66.
    9. Volker Börstinghaus & Georg Hirte, 2002. "Generational Accounting versus Computable General Equilibrium," FinanzArchiv: Public Finance Analysis, Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 58(3), pages 227-243, July.
    10. Holger Bonin, 2002. "Eine fiskalische Gesamtbilanz der Zuwanderung nach Deutschland," Vierteljahrshefte zur Wirtschaftsforschung / Quarterly Journal of Economic Research, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research, vol. 71(2), pages 215-229.
    11. Bernd Raffelhuschen & Laurence J. Kotlikoff, 1999. "Generational Accounting around the Globe," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 89(2), pages 161-166, May.
    12. Shimasawa, Manabu & Oguro, Kazumasa & Masujima, Minoru, 2014. "Population Aging, Policy Reforms, and Lifetime Net Tax Rate in Japan: A Generational Accounting Approach," CIS Discussion paper series 625, Center for Intergenerational Studies, Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University.
    13. Alan J. Auerbach & Laurence J. Kotlikoff & Willi Leibfritz, 1999. "Introduction to "Generational Accounting around the World"," NBER Chapters, in: Generational Accounting around the World, pages 1-8, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    14. Timothy C. Irwin, 2015. "Defining The Government'S Debt And Deficit," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(4), pages 711-732, September.
    15. André Masson, 2002. "Méthodes et usages des comptes générationnels : un regard décalé," Économie et Prévision, Programme National Persée, vol. 154(3), pages 1-24.
    16. Westerhout, Ed, 2022. "30 Years of Generational Accounting : A Critical Review," Discussion Paper 2022-021, Tilburg University, Center for Economic Research.
    17. SHIMASAWA Manabu & OGURO Kazumasa, 2016. "Will Abenomics Save Future Generations?," Discussion papers 16100, Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI).
    18. Bodo Herzog, 2010. "Anwendung des Nachhaltigkeitsansatzes von Bohn zur Etablierung eines Frühindikators in den öffentlichen Finanzen Beitrag zur aktuellen Debatte der Föderalismuskommission II," Credit and Capital Markets, Credit and Capital Markets, vol. 43(2), pages 183-206.
    19. Janusz Jablonowski & Christoph Mueller & Bernd Raffelhüschen, 2011. "A fiscal outlook for Poland using Generational Accounts," NBP Working Papers 85, Narodowy Bank Polski.
    20. Jabłonowski, Janusz & Müller, Christoph & Raffelhüschen, Bernd, 2010. "A fiscal outlook for Poland using generational accounts," FZG Discussion Papers 47, University of Freiburg, Research Center for Generational Contracts (FZG).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Fiscal policy; Social security; Public debt; Generational accounting;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E6 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook
    • H5 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies
    • H6 - Public Economics - - National Budget, Deficit, and Debt

    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:ihs:ihsesp:80. 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: Doris Szoncsitz (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/deihsat.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.