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Taking Stock of the Functioning of the EU Fiscal Rules and Options for Reform
This paper reviews developments in fiscal rules in the European Union (EU) from the entering into force of the Treaty on European Union (the "Maastricht Treaty"), which laid the foundations for the euro, until today. It seems safe to say that fiscal positions in the EU and the euro area are now more favourable than they would have been in the absence of the Maastricht Treaty and the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP). However, the aggregate picture masks significant cross-country heterogeneity, with less progress where it would be needed most. Furthermore, the design of the rules has not always followed economic logic and has often been the product of political constraints, giving rise to some ...
Post-COVID Fiscal Rules
Regarding a prospective reform of the European Stability and Growth Pact (SGP) it seems rather consensual that a simplified framework should take account of the prevailing macroeconomic context and enhance the balancing of sustainability and stabilisation considerations. This paper provides simulation analysis for the euro area and individual countries with a view to assessing the short- and longer-term budgetary and macroeconomic implications of a move to a two-tier system with an expenditure growth rule as single operational indicator linked to a debt anchor. Compared to the status quo, our analysis suggests that expenditure growth targets which take account of the ECB's symmetric 2% infla...
Euro Area Inflation Differentials
This paper provides a comprehensive empirical analysis of the role of discretionary fiscal policy for inflation differentials across the 19 euro area countries over the period 1999-2019. The results confirm existing (older) literature that it is difficult to find robust evidence of the fiscal policy stance or impulse impacting directly on inflation differentials. We do find, however, support for an indirect effect of discretionary fiscal policy on inflation differentials working through the output gap channel. There is also some evidence that fiscal policy may be especially potent in influencing inflation differentials - with fiscal tightening cooling (and fiscal expansion increasing) inflation pressures - when the economy is above its potential. Finally, going from the overall fiscal stance or impulse to individual fiscal instruments, we find that value added tax (VAT) rate changes and public wage growth are statistically significant determinants of inflation differentials in our sample.
Cost of Borrowing Shocks and Fiscal Adjustment
Do capital markets impose fiscal discipline on governments? We investigate the responses of fiscal variables to a change in the interest rate paid by governments on their debt in a panel of 14 European countries over four decades. To this end, we estimate a panel vector autoregressive (PVAR) model, using sign restrictions via the penalty function method of Mountford and Uhlig (2009) to identify structural cost of borrowing shocks. Our baseline estimation shows that a 1 percentage point rise in the cost of borrowing leads to a cumulative improvement of the primary balance-to-GDP ratio of approximately 2 percentage points over 10 years, with the fiscal response becoming significantly evident o...
Labour Supply and Employment in the Euro Area Countries
The functioning of labor and product markets affects the economic environment in which monetary policy is conducted. For example, structural policy measures which enhance labor supply and employment growth increase the pace at which an economy can grow without higher inflation. A greater flexibility of euro area labor markets and wages would reduce adjustment costs and inflation pressures in the case of adverse supply shocks and augment resilience of the economy, facilitating the conduct of the stability-oriented monetary policy of the ECB. In addition, an enhanced flexibility of wages and labor mobility is needed to limit employment losses in the case of adverse country specific shocks, thereby facilitating the functioning of EMU.
Structural Reforms in EMU and the Role of Monetary Policy: a Survey of the Literature
The need for structural reforms in the euro area has often been advocated. These reforms would improve the welfare of euro area citizens and also, as a welcome side-effect, facilitate the conduct of monetary policy. Against this background, a particularly relevant question that can be posed is whether monetary policy should help implement structural reforms. The objective of this paper is to provide a review of the existing literature on structural reforms in Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) and to discuss the possible ways in which monetary policy could support the structural reform process. In the context of EMU, the main conclusions that emerge are that the monetary policy for the euro a...
