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The strong increase of Austrian government debt in the Kreisky era: Austro-Keynesianism or just stubborn forecast errors?

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  • Florian Brugger

    (University of Graz)

  • Jörn Kleinert

    (University of Graz)

Abstract

In the Kreisky era (1970–1983), Austrian government debts increased strongly. Historically, the attitude of Kreisky and the Social Democrats towards Keynesian fiscal policy measures to fight unemployment during the oil crises has been held to be responsible for the successive budget deficits. Kreisky’s ideological debt policy has become a narrative that has strongly influenced Austrian fiscal policy until today. While this explanation for the strong increase in public debt during the Kreisky era is widely accepted, it is not necessarily true. In this paper, we assess a different explanation: the deficits might simply have resulted from forecast errors of GDP growth in those turbulent times. We find that about one-third of the increase in the debt-over-GDP ratio is directly explained by short-run forecast errors, i.e., the difference between the approved and the realized budget, and an additional one-fifth is the lower bound of forecast error regarding the long-run growth rate.

Suggested Citation

  • Florian Brugger & Jörn Kleinert, 2019. "The strong increase of Austrian government debt in the Kreisky era: Austro-Keynesianism or just stubborn forecast errors?," Empirica, Springer;Austrian Institute for Economic Research;Austrian Economic Association, vol. 46(2), pages 229-248, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:empiri:v:46:y:2019:i:2:d:10.1007_s10663-017-9396-0
    DOI: 10.1007/s10663-017-9396-0
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Fiscal policy; Government debt; Forecast errors; Narrative economics;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • H62 - Public Economics - - National Budget, Deficit, and Debt - - - Deficit; Surplus
    • H68 - Public Economics - - National Budget, Deficit, and Debt - - - Forecasts of Budgets, Deficits, and Debt
    • E37 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Forecasting and Simulation: Models and Applications
    • E65 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - Studies of Particular Policy Episodes

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