The elusive character of fiscal sustainability

Antonio Afonso and Joao Jalles

Applied Economics, 2016, vol. 48, issue 28, 2651-2664

Abstract: We assess the sustainability of public finances in OECD countries using unit root and cointegration analysis, controlling for endogenous breaks. Results deem fiscal sustainability as rather elusive since we find lack of cointegration -- absence of sustainability -- between government revenues and expenditures (except for Austria, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Netherlands, Sweden and UK); improvements of the primary balance after worsening debt ratios only for Australia, Belgium, Germany, Ireland, Netherlands and the UK; and Granger causality from government debt to primary balances for 12 countries (suggesting Ricardian regimes).

Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (31)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00036846.2015.1128074 (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:taf:applec:v:48:y:2016:i:28:p:2651-2664

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RAEC20

DOI: 10.1080/00036846.2015.1128074

Access Statistics for this article

Applied Economics is currently edited by Anita Phillips

More articles in Applied Economics from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().