Pas disponible en français
Edmund Moshammer
- 19 June 2024
- ECONOMIC BULLETIN - ARTICLEEconomic Bulletin Issue 4, 2024Details
- Abstract
- This article discusses the challenges for public finances arising from (i) demographic ageing, (ii) increases in defence expenditure, (iii) digitalisation and (iv) climate change. While these changes are likely to occur, the associated fiscal costs are difficult to estimate with precision. Nonetheless, as far as possible prudent fiscal policy should already be taking these into account.
- JEL Code
- H68 : Public Economics→National Budget, Deficit, and Debt→Forecasts of Budgets, Deficits, and Debt
J11 : Labor and Demographic Economics→Demographic Economics→Demographic Trends, Macroeconomic Effects, and Forecasts
H56 : Public Economics→National Government Expenditures and Related Policies→National Security and War
- 14 September 2016
- WORKING PAPER SERIES - No. 1963Details
- Abstract
- This paper shows that initial cross-country institutional differences can explain to a substantial extent the relative GDP performance of European countries since 1995, after controlling for the initial level of GDP per capita and government debt. It shows that improving the quality of institutions could lead to significantly higher per capita GDP. It also shows that an initial government debt level above a threshold (e.g. 60-70%) coupled with institutional quality below the EU average tends to be associated with particularly poor subsequent real growth performance during this period. Interestingly, the detrimental effect of high debt levels seems cushioned by the presence of very sound institutions. This might be because good institutions help to alleviate the debt problem in various ways, e.g. by ensuring sufficient fiscal consolidation in the longer-run, allowing for better use of government expenditures and promoting sustainable growth, social fairness and more efficient tax administration. The results are confirmed across a large sample of countries, also including OECD countries outside Europe. The empirical findings on the importance of institutions are robust to various measures of output growth, different measures of institutional indicators, different sample sizes, different country groupings and to the inclusion of additional control variables. Overall, the results tend to support the call for structural reforms in general and reforms enhancing the efficiency of public administration and regulation, the rule of law and the fight against rent-seeking and corruption in particular.
- JEL Code
- O43 : Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth→Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity→Institutions and Growth
C23 : Mathematical and Quantitative Methods→Single Equation Models, Single Variables→Panel Data Models, Spatio-temporal Models
E02 : Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics→General→Institutions and the Macroeconomy
H63 : Public Economics→National Budget, Deficit, and Debt→Debt, Debt Management, Sovereign Debt