Visibility of Public Budget Burdens and Benefits in New European Union Member Countries

The size and pattern of any public budget depend, among other factors, on the visibility of both the burdens and benefits of public revenue and expenditure. Furthermore, such visibility is a necessary - not a sufficient - condition for an efficient allocation of resources between the private and public sectors of an economy. The aim of this contribution, based on a recent research, is to apply fiscal visibility indicators to territorial government levels of new European Union member countries by using data and new qualitative information provided by the International Monetary Fund to draw relevant policy conclusions. Results obtained are particularly important for present and future European Union member countries aiming to make their respective fiscal systems converge for a better integration process, since significant allocation improvements can be obtained by implementing economic policy changes (public accounting systems, tax systems, public deficit management techniques...) in the new European Union member countries to raise both multiplicative and additive visibility values of public budget burdens and benefits and to bring them near to their optimal values. The proposed methodology, applied to former and new European Union member countries, can also be extended to other OECD economies to check whether the European Union pattern is shared by all developed countries and to design future general economic policies.