IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ebl/ecbull/eb-20-00464.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Fiscal space in the euro area before Covid-19

Author

Listed:
  • Jerome Creel

    (OFCE Sciences Po and ESCP Business School)

Abstract

Numerical simulations of fiscal space in the euro area, based on 12 different situations, point to the large uncertainty surrounding the capacity of Member States to pay back their public debts. Unless nominal long term interest rates remain low and economic growth resumes at its pre-Covid-19 median, most countries will fail to address debt sustainability. Although the analytics behind this exercise is common knowledge among macroeconomists, it gives an order of the magnitude of fiscal space in the euro area and it also confirms that interactions between the ECB and governments are key to escape the public finances consequences of an exogenous global shock like Covid-19.

Suggested Citation

  • Jerome Creel, 2020. "Fiscal space in the euro area before Covid-19," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 40(2), pages 1698-1706.
    • Handle: RePEc:ebl:ecbull:eb-20-00464
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.accessecon.com/Pubs/EB/2020/Volume40/EB-20-V40-I2-P146.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Olivier Blanchard, 2019. "Public Debt and Low Interest Rates," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 109(4), pages 1197-1229, April.
    2. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/2965 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Jérôme Creel & Henri Sterdyniak, 1995. "Les déficits publics en Europe : causes, conséquences ou remèdes à la crise ?," Revue de l'OFCE, Programme National Persée, vol. 54(1), pages 57-100.
    4. Olivier J Blanchard, 2019. "Public Debt: Fiscal and Welfare Costs in a Time of Low Interest Rates," Policy Briefs PB19-2, Peterson Institute for International Economics.
    5. Aldama Pierre & Jérôme Creel, 2016. "Why fiscal regimes matter for fiscal sustainability analysis : an application to France," Documents de Travail de l'OFCE 2016-15, Observatoire Francais des Conjonctures Economiques (OFCE).
    6. Kose, M. Ayhan & Kurlat, Sergio & Ohnsorge, Franziska & Sugawara, Naotaka, 2022. "A cross-country database of fiscal space," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 128(C).
    7. Pierre Aldama & Jérôme Creel, 2020. "Why Fiscal Regimes Matter for Fiscal Sustainability," Working papers 769, Banque de France.
    8. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/8g1v863ou8ne8avs9kr75pav8 is not listed on IDEAS
    9. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/3161 is not listed on IDEAS
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. repec:spo:wpmain:info:hdl:2441/19bkog4p4c9i4bi1t86h4tt9ri is not listed on IDEAS
    2. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/19bkog4p4c9i4bi1t86h4tt9ri is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Ly Dai Hung, 2022. "Safe Assets at Financial Globalization," Journal of International Commerce, Economics and Policy (JICEP), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 13(03), pages 1-21, October.
    4. Ablam Estel Apeti & Jean-Louis Combes & Xavier Debrun & Alexandru Minea, 2021. "Did Fiscal Space Foster Covid-19's Fiscal Stimuli ?," Post-Print hal-03351634, HAL.
    5. Moreno Badia, Marialuz & Medas, Paulo & Gupta, Pranav & Xiang, Yuan, 2022. "Debt is not free," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 127(C).
    6. Martin Werding, 2022. "Fiscal sustainability and low interest rates: what an indicator can(’t) tell," Empirica, Springer;Austrian Institute for Economic Research;Austrian Economic Association, vol. 49(4), pages 991-1008, November.
    7. Augustin, Patrick & Sokolovski, Valeri & Subrahmanyam, Marti G. & Tomio, Davide, 2022. "In sickness and in debt: The COVID-19 impact on sovereign credit risk," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 143(3), pages 1251-1274.
    8. Paraskevi K. Salamaliki & Ioannis A. Venetis, 2024. "Fiscal Space and Policy Response to Financial Crises: Market Access and Deficit Concerns," Open Economies Review, Springer, vol. 35(2), pages 323-361, April.
    9. Luca Metelli & Kevin Pallara, 2020. "Fiscal space and the size of the fiscal multiplier," Temi di discussione (Economic working papers) 1293, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
    10. El-Shagi, Makram & Schweinitz, Gregor von, 2021. "Fiscal policy and fiscal fragility: Empirical evidence from the OECD," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 115(C).
    11. Alexander Beames & Mariano Kulish & Nadine Yamout, 2022. "Fiscal Policy and the Slowdown in Trend Growth in an Open Economy," Working Papers 143, Red Nacional de Investigadores en Economía (RedNIE).
    12. Christian Breuer, 2020. "Goverment Debt Post COVID-19: Back To Golden Rules," Chemnitz Economic Papers 041, Department of Economics, Chemnitz University of Technology, revised Feb 2020.
    13. Javier Andres & Oscar Arce & Jesus Fernandez-Villaverde & Samuel Hurtado, 2022. "Deciphering the Macroeconomic Effects of Internal Devaluations in a Monetary Union," International Journal of Central Banking, International Journal of Central Banking, vol. 18(5), pages 1-47, December.
    14. Ludger Schuknecht, 2019. "Fiscal-Financial Vulnerabilities," CESifo Working Paper Series 7776, CESifo.
    15. Daisuke Miyashita, 2023. "Public debt and income inequality in an endogenous growth model with elastic labor supply," International Journal of Economic Policy Studies, Springer, vol. 17(2), pages 447-472, August.
    16. Schuster, Florian & Krahé, Max & Sigl-Glöckner, Philippa, 2021. "Wird die Konjunkturkomponente der Schuldenbremse in ihrer heutigen Ausgestaltung ihrer Aufgabe noch gerecht? Analyse und ein Reformvorschlag," Papers 277885, Dezernat Zukunft - Institute for Macrofinance, Berlin.
    17. John Cochrane, 2022. "The fiscal root of inflation," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 45, pages 22-40, July.
    18. Karl Whelan, 2021. "Central banks and inflation: where do we stand and how did we get here?," European Journal of Economics and Economic Policies: Intervention, Edward Elgar Publishing, vol. 18(3), pages 310–330-3, December.
    19. Max Krahé & Florian Schuster & Philippa Sigl-Glöckner, 2021. "Wird die Konjunkturkomponente der Schuldenbremse ihrer Aufgabe noch gerecht? [Is the Cyclical Component of the Debt Brake Still Up to Its Task?]," Wirtschaftsdienst, Springer;ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 101(8), pages 621-628, August.
    20. Langenmayr Dominika & Mittermaier Ferdinand, 2021. "Nachhaltiges Wirtschaften, nachhaltig finanziert: Herausforderungen für die Politik in den 2020er Jahren," Perspektiven der Wirtschaftspolitik, De Gruyter, vol. 22(3), pages 176-190, September.
    21. Battistini, Niccolò & Callegari, Giovanni, 2020. "Public spending at the effective lower bound: how significant are the sustainability risks?," Research Bulletin, European Central Bank, vol. 67.
    22. Narayana R. Kocherlakota, 2023. "Public Debt Bubbles In Heterogeneous Agent Models With Tail Risk," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 64(2), pages 491-509, May.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Fiscal policy; public debt; fiscal deficit; Covid-19;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E6 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook
    • H6 - Public Economics - - National Budget, Deficit, and Debt

    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:ebl:ecbull:eb-20-00464. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: John P. Conley (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    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.