Suchergebnisse

We review the main budgetary measures not accepted by the Portuguese Constitutional Court in the Budget Laws of 2012, 2013 and 2014. Considering the feedback effect of the fiscal impulse, the impact on the budget balance is -0.42% and of -0.34% of GDP respectively for 2013 and for 2014; in both years the impact of the fiscal expansion could result in rather mitigated reductions in the unemployment rate in the range of 0.1 percent; the impact on the government debt level is around 0.42% of GDP in 2013, declining from then on, in a conservative estimate, and about 2.95% of GDP in 2020 in the worst case scenario.

The global financial and economic crisis has placed a significant strain on publicfinances in many economies. Since sound public finances are crucial for price and financial stability and for economic growth, concerns about rising debt commitments have led to a renewed interest in the analysis of debt sustainability in the last decade. This paper discusses the concept of fiscal sustainability and investigates the factors driving the public debt dynamics in the Republic of Macedonia over the period 2004-2021. Although the level of indebtedness is still moderate (below 50% of GDP), the public debt dynamics from 2008 is worrying (public debt has doubled in only 7 years). The starting point for assessing debt sustainability is the government budget constraint equation. This equation explains the evolution and accumulation of government debt by three main factors: the primary balance, the "snowball" effect, and the deficit-debt adjustment. The conventional debt sustainability analysis showed that the general government debt ratio over the period 2004-2017 increased moderately as a result of a significant increase in the primary deficit (by 16 p.p.), that was almost completely offset by the positive "snowball" effect. In addition, we found that in the pre-crisis period (2004-2008), the general government debt ratio declined significantly, mainly as a result of a positive "snowball" effect but also because of the primary surplus. Contrary to pre-crisis developments, the general government debt ratio increased significantly (by 19 p.p.) in the post-crisis period (2009-2017), due to the significant primary deficit increase, while the positive "snowball" effect was moderate.

A reminder, so when next you hear about fiscal restraint. Figure 1: Debt held by the public as share of GDP (blue), and as share of potential GDP (red). NBER peak-to-trough recession dates shaded gray. Source: Treasury via FRED, CBO, NBER and author's calculations.

Reader Bruce Hall notes the extreme jump in debt-to-GDP in 2020 was attributable in part to the public health economic lockdowns, to wit: But the economic shutdowns certainly affected the equation's denominator in 2020. I note that using the counterfactual potential GDP as estimated by CBO does not change the picture substantively – I add […]

The impacts of public expenditures on economic growth have been revisited in this paper with respect to capital expenditure, recurrent expenditure and the government fiscal expansion in line with support for the budgetary allocations to various sectors in the context of the Nigerian economy. Pesaran's ARDL approach has been applied to carry out the impact analysis using annual time-series data from 1981 to 2017. Empirical findings support the existence of a level relationship between public spending indicators and economic growth in Nigeria. Incisively, recurrent expenditures of government were found to be significantly impacting on economic growth in a negative way while the positive impacts of public capital expenditures were not significant to economic growth over the period of the study. Further results from the Granger Causality Test reveal that fiscal expansion of the government that is hinged on debt financing is strongly granger causing public expenditures and domestic investment with the latter also Granger causing real growth in the economy. We, therefore, provide some important policy recommendations following the results of the empirical analysis. © 2020, The Author(s).