The Tax-Spend Debate and Budgetary Policy in Austria

Johann Bröthaler () and Michael Getzner

International Advances in Economic Research, 2015, vol. 21, issue 3, 299-315

Abstract: In the aftermath of the 2008 financial and economic crisis, governments developed plans to steer fiscal policies back to a sustainable path. Austria is no exception, since the latest 2012 consolidation package aimed to balance the budget by 2016. For the success of consolidation policies, however, it is of great importance which fiscal policy strategies are pursued. For instance, should the deficit be reduced by reducing expenditure, by increasing revenue, or by a mixed coordinated policy? Empirical evidence from the mid-1990s indicated that Austria’s policy makers followed a path according to the spend-tax hypothesis, deciding on expenditure and then caring about the funding of public tasks. Since 1995, the year of Austria’s accession to the European Union, fiscal policy frameworks have changed (e.g., Maastricht Treaty, Fiscal Pact), and thus budgetary policies might have changed as well. The current paper provides new econometric evidence for a stable spend-tax fiscal policy decision process in Austria for the last 60 years. Therefore, it seems that the importance of reducing expenditure (about 72 % of the total consolidation volume in the current package) accounts for this principal approach in Austrian fiscal policy making. However, left open is whether the envisioned increase in revenues (about 28 % of the total consolidation volume) might be counterproductive for sustainably balancing the budget. Copyright International Atlantic Economic Society 2015

Keywords: Public debt; Public revenue/expenditure; Tax-spend debate (revenue-expenditure nexus); Budgetary policies; H6; E6 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s11294-015-9532-1 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:iaecre:v:21:y:2015:i:3:p:299-315:10.1007/s11294-015-9532-1

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/11294

DOI: 10.1007/s11294-015-9532-1

Access Statistics for this article

International Advances in Economic Research is currently edited by Katherine S. Virgo

More articles in International Advances in Economic Research from Springer, International Atlantic Economic Society Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().