IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fau/wpaper/wp2010_15.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Economic Volatility and Institutional Reforms in Macroeconomic Policymaking: The Case of Fiscal Policy

Author

Abstract

We evaluate proposals for independent fiscal authority put forward as a solution to excessive public spending. Our main conclusion is that moving the responsibility to set broad measures of fiscal policy from the hands of government to an independent fiscal council is not necessarily welfare improving. We show that the change is welfare improving if nature of uncertainty between fiscal and monetary policymakers does not change as a result. However, if this institutional change involves considerable decrease of capacity of the new agency to recognize economic shocks, citizens' welfare can decrease as a results. This is especially significant in times of increased economic volatility such as in a recent global financial crisis. Faced with the ambiguous theoretical result, we try to gain deeper insight by calibrating our simple model.

Suggested Citation

  • Adam Gersl & Jan Zápal, 2010. "Economic Volatility and Institutional Reforms in Macroeconomic Policymaking: The Case of Fiscal Policy," Working Papers IES 2010/15, Charles University Prague, Faculty of Social Sciences, Institute of Economic Studies, revised Aug 2010.
    • Handle: RePEc:fau:wpaper:wp2010_15
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://ies.fsv.cuni.cz/default/file/download/id/13774
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Saint-Paul, Gilles, 2002. "Some Thoughts on Macroeconomic Fluctuations and the Timing of Labor Market Reform," IZA Discussion Papers 611, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    2. Gilles Saint-Paul, 2004. "Macroeconomic Fluctuations and the Timing of Labour-Market Reform," International Economic Association Series, in: Robert M. Solow (ed.), Structural Reform and Economic Policy, chapter 7, pages 119-129, Palgrave Macmillan.
    3. von Hagen, Jurgen & Harden, Ian J., 1995. "Budget processes and commitment to fiscal discipline," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 39(3-4), pages 771-779, April.
    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. Adam Geršl & Martina Jašová & Jan Zápal, 2014. "Fiscal Councils and Economic Volatility," Czech Journal of Economics and Finance (Finance a uver), Charles University Prague, Faculty of Social Sciences, vol. 64(3), pages 190-212, June.
    2. Jean-Luc Gaffard, 2003. "Promouvoir la croissance en Europe : vérités et mystifications. Critique du rapport d'A. Sapir présenté à la Commission européenne en juillet 2003 : 'An Agenda for a Growing Europe. Making the EU Econ," Post-Print hal-01019489, HAL.
    3. Poplawski Ribeiro, Marcos & Beetsma, Roel, 2008. "The political economy of structural reforms under a deficit restriction," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 30(1), pages 179-198, March.
    4. Roel M. W. J. Beetsma & Xavier Debrun, 2004. "Reconciling Stability and Growth: Smart Pacts and Structural Reforms," IMF Staff Papers, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 51(3), pages 431-456, November.
    5. Nadine Leiner-Killinger & Víctor López Pérez & Roger Stiegert & Giovanni Vitale, 2007. "Structural reforms in EMU and the role of monetary policy – a survey of the literature," Occasional Paper Series 66, European Central Bank.
    6. Calcagnini, Giorgio & Giombini, Germana & Saltari, Enrico, 2009. "Financial and labor market imperfections and investment," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 102(1), pages 22-26, January.
    7. Borge, Lars-Erik, 2005. "Strong politicians, small deficits: evidence from Norwegian local governments," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 21(2), pages 325-344, June.
    8. Russo, Massimo, 1998. "Policy coordination in the European Union (from the EMS to EMU)," Sede de la CEPAL en Santiago (Estudios e Investigaciones) 34386, Naciones Unidas Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL).
    9. Rui Nuno Baleiras, 2014. "Towards predictability and sustainability of public finances: a commentary on 'Control of the Central Government Budget Outturn'," CFP Occasional Papers 02/2014, Portuguese Public Finance Council.
    10. Bessho, Shun-ichiro & Hirota, Haruaki, 2023. "Do public account financial statements matter? Evidence from Japanese municipalities," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 78(C).
    11. Ehrhart, Karl-Martin & Gardner, Roy & von Hagen, Jurgen & Keser, Claudia, 2007. "Budget processes: Theory and experimental evidence," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 59(2), pages 279-295, May.
    12. Wehner, Joachim, 2010. "Institutional constraints on profligate politicians: the conditional effect of partisan fragmentation on budget deficits," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 28649, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    13. Frankel, Jeffrey A. & Vegh, Carlos A. & Vuletin, Guillermo, 2013. "On graduation from fiscal procyclicality," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 100(1), pages 32-47.
    14. Signe Krogstrup & Sébastien Wälti, 2011. "Women and Budget Deficits," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 113(3), pages 712-728, September.
    15. Fabio Franchino & Camilla Mariotto, 2021. "Noncompliance risk, asymmetric power and the design of enforcement of the European economic governance," European Union Politics, , vol. 22(4), pages 591-610, December.
    16. Christopher Berry, 2008. "Piling On: Multilevel Government and the Fiscal Common‐Pool," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 52(4), pages 802-820, October.
    17. Krogstrup, Signe & Wyplosz, Charles, 2010. "A common pool theory of supranational deficit ceilings," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 54(2), pages 269-278, February.
    18. Jaramillo, Miguel, 2018. "Los efectos desprotectores de la protección del empleo: El impacto de la reforma del contrato laboral de 2001," Revista Moneda, Banco Central de Reserva del Perú, issue 173, pages 31-36.
    19. Martin Ardanaz & Carlos Scartascini, 2014. "The economic effects of constitutions: do budget institutions make forms of government more alike?," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 25(3), pages 301-329, September.
    20. Mark Hallerberg & Carlos Scartascini, 2011. "Economic Crisis and Fiscal Reforms in Latin America," Research Department Publications 4697, Inter-American Development Bank, Research Department.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    dynamic inconsistency; fiscal and monetary policy interaction; independent fiscal council;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E42 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Monetary Sytsems; Standards; Regimes; Government and the Monetary System
    • E58 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Central Banks and Their Policies
    • E63 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - Comparative or Joint Analysis of Fiscal and Monetary Policy; Stabilization; Treasury Policy
    • H30 - Public Economics - - Fiscal Policies and Behavior of Economic Agents - - - General

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:fau:wpaper:wp2010_15. 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: Natalie Svarcova (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/icunicz.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.