Peter Claeys

Fiscal Sustainability Across Government Tiers

This paper analyses how fiscal adjustment comes about when both central and sub-national governments are involved in consolidation. We test sustainability of public debt with a fiscal rule for both the federal and regional government. Results for the German Lander show that lower tier governments bear a relatively smaller part of the burden of debt consolidation, if they consolidate at all. Most of the fiscal adjustment occurs via central government debt. In contrast, both the US federal and state levels contribute to consolidation of public finances.

Measuring Bilateral Spillover and Testing Contagion on Sovereign Bond Markets in Europe

The global financial crisis rapidly spread across borders and financial markets, and also distressed EU bond markets. The crisis did not hit all markets in the same way. We measure the strength and direction of linkages between 16 EU sovereign bond markets using a factor-augmented version of the VAR model in Diebold and Yilmaz (2009). We then provide a novel test for contagion by applying the multivariate structural break test of Qu and Perron (2007) on this FAVAR detecting significant sudden changes in shock transmission. Results indicate substantial spillover, especially between EMU countries, with Belgium, Italy and Spain being key markets during the financial crisis. Contagion has been a rather rare phenomenon limited to a few well defined moments of uncertainty on financial assistance packages for Greece, Ireland and Portugal. Most of the frequent surges in market co-movement are driven by larger shocks rather than by contagion.

Fiscal Policy and Interest Rates: The Role of Financial and Economic Integration

It is commonly believed that a fiscal expansion raises interest rates. However, these crowding out effects of deficits have been found to be small or non-existent. One explanation is that financial integration offsets interest rate differentials on globalised bond markets. This paper measures the degree of integration of government bond markets, using spatial modelling techniques to take this spillover on financial markets into account. Our main finding is that the crowding out effect on domestic interest rates is significant, but is reduced by spillover across borders. This spillover is important in major crises or in periods of coordinated policy actions. This result is generally robust to various measures of cross-country linkages. We find spillover to be much stronger among EU countries.

A Note on the Relationship between the Cyclicality of Markups and Fiscal Policy

We demonstrate that the cyclical behaviour of markups is related to the cyclical behaviour of government spending. For plausible parameter assumptions, pro-cyclical spending results in less counter-cyclical mark-ups. Evidence for thirteen OECD countries confirms a weak version of this hypothesis.

Budgetary spillovers and long-term interest rates

The effect of fiscal expansions on interest rates has commanded enormous theoretical interest, but the hypothesis of crowding out has received only some — albeit not very robust — empirical endorsement. Most economists would nevertheless agree with the position that consolidating public finances reduces pressure on long-term interest rates and will be conducive to economic growth in the long run by stimulating private investment (Gale and Orszag, 2003). The crowding out premise is also an important motivation for the consolidation of public finances, as is evident from the policies advocated by both the European Commission and the European Central Bank.

The dynamic behaviour of budget components and output – the cases of France, Germany, Portugal, and Spain

The main focus of this paper is the relation between the cyclical components of total revenues and expenditures and the budget balance in France, Germany, Portugal, and Spain. We try to uncover past trends behind the development of public finances that contribute to explaining the current stance of fiscal policy. The disaggregate analysis of fiscal policy in an SVAR that mixes long and short-term constraints allows us to look into the transmission channels of fiscal policy and to derive a model-based indicator of structural balance. The main conclusions are that fiscal slippages are mainly due to reversals in tax policies, which are unmatched by expenditure adjustments. As a consequence, deficits rise when economic conditions worsen but cause a ‘ratcheting up’ in the size of government in economic booms. The Stability and Growth Pact has not eradicated these procyclical policies. Bad policies in good times also contribute to aggregate macroeconomic instability.

Combine to Compete: Improving Fiscal Forecast Accuracy Over Time

Budget forecasts have become increasingly important as a tool of fiscal management to influence expectations of bond markets and the public at large. The inherent difficulty in projecting macroeconomic variables – together with political bias – thwart the accuracy of budget forecasts. We improve accuracy by combining the forecasts of both private and public agencies for Italy over the period 1993-2012. A weighted combined forecast of the deficit/ ratio is superior to any single forecast. Deficits are hard to predict due to shifting economic conditions and political events. We test and compare predictive accuracy over time and although a weighted combined forecast is robust to breaks, there is no significant improvement over a simple RW model.