IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/bubdps/352020.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Fiscal sustainability duringthe COVID-19 pandemic

Author

Listed:
  • Hürtgen, Patrick

Abstract

The "Great Lockdown" implemented in response to the COVID-19 pandemic has led to a severe world-wide economic crisis. In euro area countries, sovereign debt-to-GDP ratios are on the rise and reductions in expected fiscal surpluses raise sustainability concerns amongst investors. This paper provides novel estimates of non-linear state-dependent fiscal limits based on Bi (2012) for the five largest euro area countries. Within the DSGE model I build a COVID-19 scenario calibrated to match the decline in real GDP growth forecasts between April and February2020 and the fiscal stimulus packages announced up to the end of March 2020. On average, fiscal space contracts by 58.4 percent of national GDP. In a worst-case scenario fiscal space is 28.6 percent for Italy and 65.9 percent of national GDP for Germany.

Suggested Citation

  • Hürtgen, Patrick, 2020. "Fiscal sustainability duringthe COVID-19 pandemic," Discussion Papers 35/2020, Deutsche Bundesbank.
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:bubdps:352020
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/222543/1/172552323X.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Carola Binder, 2020. "Coronavirus Fears and Macroeconomic Expectations," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 102(4), pages 721-730, October.
    2. Luca Fornaro & Martin Wolf, 2020. "Covid-19 coronavirus and macroeconomic policy," Economics Working Papers 1713, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra.
    3. Huixin Bi & Nora Traum, 2012. "Estimating Sovereign Default Risk," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(3), pages 161-166, May.
    4. Bi, Huixin & Shen, Wenyi & Yang, Shu-Chun S., 2016. "Fiscal limits in developing countries: A DSGE Approach," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 119-130.
    5. Coibion, Olivier & Gorodnichenko, Yuriy & Weber, Michael, 2020. "Labor Markets During the Covid-19 Crisis: A Preliminary View," Department of Economics, Working Paper Series qt7rx7t91p, Department of Economics, Institute for Business and Economic Research, UC Berkeley.
    6. Nuno Coimbra, 2020. "Sovereigns at risk: A dynamic model of sovereign debt and banking leverage," Post-Print halshs-02491806, HAL.
    7. Bi, Huixin, 2012. "Sovereign default risk premia, fiscal limits, and fiscal policy," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 56(3), pages 389-410.
    8. Veronica Guerrieri & Guido Lorenzoni & Ludwig Straub & Iván Werning, 2022. "Macroeconomic Implications of COVID-19: Can Negative Supply Shocks Cause Demand Shortages?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 112(5), pages 1437-1474, May.
    9. Nuno Coimbra, 2019. "Sovereigns at Risk: A Dynamic Model of Sovereign Debt and Banking Leverage," NBER Chapters, in: NBER International Seminar on Macroeconomics 2019, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Alan J. Auerbach & Yuriy Gorodnichenko, 2017. "Fiscal Stimulus and Fiscal Sustainability," NBER Working Papers 23789, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. Cristina Arellano, 2008. "Default Risk and Income Fluctuations in Emerging Economies," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(3), pages 690-712, June.
    12. Atish R. Ghosh & Jun I. Kim & Enrique G. Mendoza & Jonathan D. Ostry & Mahvash S. Qureshi, 2013. "Fiscal Fatigue, Fiscal Space and Debt Sustainability in Advanced Economies," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 0, pages 4-30, February.
    13. Nuno Coimbra, 2020. "Sovereigns at risk: A dynamic model of sovereign debt and banking leverage," PSE-Ecole d'économie de Paris (Postprint) halshs-02491806, HAL.
    14. Luigi Bocola, 2016. "The Pass-Through of Sovereign Risk," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 124(4), pages 879-926.
    15. Coimbra, Nuno, 2020. "Sovereigns at risk: A dynamic model of sovereign debt and banking leverage," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 124(C).
    16. Javier Andrés & Pablo Burriel & Wenyi Shen, 2020. "Debt sustainability and fiscal space in a heterogeneous Monetary Union: normal times vs the zero lower bound," Working Papers 2001, Banco de España.
    17. Huixin Bi, 2017. "Fiscal Sustainability: A Cross-Country Analysis," Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, issue Q IV, pages 5-35.
    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. Shah, Sayar Ahmad & Garg, Bhavesh, 2023. "Testing policy effectiveness during COVID-19: An NK-DSGE analysis," Journal of Asian Economics, Elsevier, vol. 84(C).
    2. Greppmair, Stefan & Jank, Stephan & Smajlbegovic, Esad, 2023. "On the importance of fiscal space: Evidence from short sellers during the COVID-19 pandemic," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 147(C).

    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. Huixin Bi & Wenyi Shen & Shu‐Chun S. Yang, 2022. "Fiscal implications of interest rate normalization in the United States," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 55(2), pages 868-904, May.
    2. Christos Shiamptanis, 2019. "Tax Austerity: Does it avert solvency crises?," LCERPA Working Papers ec0119, Laurier Centre for Economic Research and Policy Analysis.
    3. Gilchrist, Simon & Wei, Bin & Yue, Vivian Z. & Zakrajšek, Egon, 2022. "Sovereign risk and financial risk," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 136(C).
    4. Francesco Pappadà & Yanos Zylberberg, 2019. "Sovereign Default and Imperfect Tax Enforcement," CESifo Working Paper Series 7694, CESifo.
    5. Sewon Hur & César Sosa-Padilla & Zeynep Yom, 2021. "Optimal bailouts in banking and sovereign crises," Working Papers 51, Red Nacional de Investigadores en Economía (RedNIE).
    6. Florent Kanga GBONGUE & Lambert N’Galadjo BAMBA, 2023. "Le modèle hybride de la structure par terme des primes souveraines de crédit et de liquidité dans la zone UEMOA," Region et Developpement, Region et Developpement, LEAD, Universite du Sud - Toulon Var, vol. 57, pages 101-145.
    7. Matsuoka, Hideaki, 2015. "Fiscal limits and sovereign default risk in Japan," Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, Elsevier, vol. 38(C), pages 13-30.
    8. Dallal Bendjellal, 2022. "Sovereign Risk, Financial Fragility and Debt Maturity," Working Papers hal-03792522, HAL.
    9. Zuzana Mucka, 2019. "The mirror does not lie: Endogenous fiscal limits for Slovakia," Working Papers Working Paper No. 2/2019, Council for Budget Responsibility.
    10. Luca Metelli & Kevin Pallara, 2020. "Fiscal space and the size of the fiscal multiplier," Temi di discussione (Economic working papers) 1293, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
    11. Huixin Bi & Ms. Wenyi Shen & Ms. Susan S. Yang, 2014. "Fiscal Limits, External Debt, and Fiscal Policy in Developing Countries," IMF Working Papers 2014/049, International Monetary Fund.
    12. Bi, Huixin & Shen, Wenyi & Yang, Shu-Chun S., 2016. "Fiscal limits in developing countries: A DSGE Approach," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 119-130.
    13. Dallal Bendjellal, 2022. "Sovereign Risk, Financial Fragility and Debt Maturity," AMSE Working Papers 2222, Aix-Marseille School of Economics, France.
    14. D’Erasmo, P. & Mendoza, E.G. & Zhang, J., 2016. "What is a Sustainable Public Debt?," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & Harald Uhlig (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 2493-2597, Elsevier.
    15. repec:wlu:lcerpa:wm0070 is not listed on IDEAS
    16. Auray, Stéphane & Eyquem, Aurélien & Ma, Xiaofei, 2018. "Banks, sovereign risk and unconventional monetary policies," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 108(C), pages 153-171.
    17. Kollintzas, Tryphon & Tsoukalas, Konstantinos, 2015. "Bank and Sovereign Risk Interdependence in the Euro Area," CEPR Discussion Papers 10485, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    18. Sokolova, Anna, 2015. "Fiscal limits and monetary policy: default vs. inflation," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 189-198.
    19. Izumi, Ryuichiro, 2020. "Financial stability with sovereign debt," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 51(C).
    20. Matthieu Darracq Paries & Georg Muller & Niki Papadopoulou, 2022. "Fiscal Multipliers with Sovereign Risk and Fragile Banks," Working Papers 2022-5, Central Bank of Cyprus.
    21. Philippopoulos, Apostolis & Varthalitis, Petros & Vassilatos, Vanghelis, 2017. "Fiscal consolidation and its cross-country effects," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 83(C), pages 55-106.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    state-dependent fiscal limits; fiscal space; sovereign debt; Laffer curve; COVID-19;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E32 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Business Fluctuations; Cycles
    • H30 - Public Economics - - Fiscal Policies and Behavior of Economic Agents - - - General
    • 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:zbw:bubdps:352020. 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: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dbbgvde.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.