 Economic reactions to public finance consolidation: a survey of the literatureMaria Gabriella Briotti No 38, Occasional Paper Series from European Central Bank Abstract: The paper reviews the theoretical and empirical literature that has investigated the conditions under which a contradictionary fiscal policy is effective in reducing debt and deficit, but does not have a negative effect on growth. The issue is central to macroeconomics and policy making, given that many countries are currently facing increasing fiscal imbalances, with additional pressure coming in the medium term from population ageing. The paper concludes that the theoretical impact of fiscal policy on aggregate demand and economic activity depends largely on the conceptual framework considered and its assumptions about the world. Empirical studies based on macro-econometric model simulations find evidence that fiscal consolidations lead initially to production losses, while they can result in a higher output in the medium term. Empirical studies focusing on episodes of changes in fiscal policies provide in turn evidence that under certain circumstances austerity measures may have an expansionary impact on the economy. JEL Classification: E62, E63, H62, H63 Keywords: balanced budget; balanced budget multiplier; budget constraint; crowding out; Debt; deficit; fiscal policy; macroeconomic stabilisation; ricardian equivalence (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ecb:ecbops:200538 Access Statistics for this paper More papers in Occasional Paper Series from European Central Bank 60640 Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC. |
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