期刊名称：Euro Area Balance of Payments and International Investment Position Statistics
印刷版ISSN：1830-3420
电子版ISSN：1830-3439
出版年度：2014
出版社：European Central Bank
摘要：This paper looks at the impact of discretionary fiscal policy on economic growth for a sample of18 EU countries over the period 1998-2011. The main novelty of this paper is the use, on therevenue side, of a dataset of fiscal measures based on the yield of actual legislative andbudgetary measures, rather than approximations, such as changes in cyclically-adjustedvariables. Using static and dynamic panel data techniques, we find that fiscal consolidation canbe a drag on economic growth in the short-term, although some specific budget categories arenot found to be statistically significant. In general, the results also indicate that expenditurebasedadjustment tends to be less harmful than revenue-based adjustment. Among expenditurecuts, reductions in government investment and consumption are found to be growth reducing.Among revenues, indirect tax increases are found to have a particularly strong negative impact.Dynamic specifications suggest that consolidation reduces growth mainly in the year of fiscaladjustment, while future growth rates are affected only through the usual time persistence. Nonlinearspecifications indicate that spreading out consolidation reduces the negative impact ongrowth, but only very slightly and in the absence of financial market pressures and/or fiscalsustainability considerations. Additionally, front-loading fiscal consolidation appears to be lessdetrimental for growth when it is based on expenditure cuts rather than tax increases
关键词：Fiscal multipliers; fiscal policy and growth; panel data
