Cost of borrowing shocks and fiscal adjustment
Date
12/2015Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
Do capital markets impose fiscal discipline? To answer this question, we estimate the fiscal response to a change in the interest rate paid by 14 European governments over four decades in a panel VAR, using sign restrictions to identify structural shocks. A jump in the cost of borrowing leads to an improvement in the primary balance although insufficient to prevent a rise in the debt-to-GDP ratio. Adjustment mainly takes place via rising revenues rather than falling primary expenditures. For EMU countries, the primary balance response was stronger after 1992, when the Maastricht Treaty was signed, suggesting an important interaction between market discipline and fiscal rules.
Citation
de Groot , O , Holm-Hadulla , F & Leiner-Killinger , N 2015 , ' Cost of borrowing shocks and fiscal adjustment ' , Journal of International Money and Finance , vol. 59 , pp. 23-48 . https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jimonfin.2015.09.005
Publication
Journal of International Money and Finance
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
0261-5606Type
Journal article
Rights
Copyright (c) 2015, Elsevier Ltd. This is the author created, accepted version manuscript following peer review and may differ slightly from the final published version. The final published version of this work is available at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jimonfin.2015.09.005
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