IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/nierev/v239y2017ipr14-r31_11.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Does the Structural Budget Balance Guide Fiscal Policy Pro-Cyclically? Evidence from the Finnish Great Depression of the 1990s

Author

Listed:
  • Kuusi, Tero

Abstract

In this article, I evaluate the challenges related to the European Commission's output gap method of calculating the structural budgetary position, and assess its bottom-up alternatives in the EU's fiscal framework using the Finnish data for the years 1984–2014. The results reinforce the impression of the limited capacity of the output gap method to predict cyclical changes in real time and suggest that using the output gap method to steer fiscal policy tends to lead to a procyclical policy (stimulus in upturns and austerity in downturns). The bottom-up assessment methods that are based on discretionary fiscal policy measures appear to work better, and using them to steer fiscal policy could make the policy more effective.

Suggested Citation

  • Kuusi, Tero, 2017. "Does the Structural Budget Balance Guide Fiscal Policy Pro-Cyclically? Evidence from the Finnish Great Depression of the 1990s," National Institute Economic Review, National Institute of Economic and Social Research, vol. 239, pages 14-31, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:nierev:v:239:y:2017:i::p:r14-r31_11
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0027950100003628/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Fatás, Antonio & Singh, Sanjay R., 2024. "Supply or demand? Policy makers’ confusion in the presence of hysteresis," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 161(C).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:nierev:v:239:y:2017:i::p:r14-r31_11. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/niesruk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.