RETHINKING THE UK FISCAL FRAMEWORK: LESSONS FROM ELSEWHERE

The cornerstone of Chile’s impressive fiscal performance has been its structural balance rule. By insulating public spending from short-term copper price fluctuations and the business cycle, the rule has helped preserve fiscal discipline. However, the implementation of the rule in recent years has revealed certain challenges, and in May 2010, the government established a high-level commission to recommend reforms that could make the rule even more effective. This paper assesses the scope for improving the design and implementation of the structural balance rule in light of best practices and OECD country experience with fiscal rules. This assessment suggests several options to strengthen Chile’s fiscal rule, including by simplifying the calculation of the structural balance; enhancing the rule’s flexibility, transparency and accountability; and complementing it with a medium-term fiscal framework.

The European Union’s fiscal policy framework has undergone significant evolution and faced numerous challenges since the establishment of the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). This essay critically analyzes the development, reforms, and critiques of the EU’s fiscal rules, particularly in light of the sovereign debt crisis and the recent pandemic. Initially, the EMU focused little on fiscal integration, but the subsequent two decades have been marked by expansion and crisis management, with key reforms such as the ‘Six Pack,’ the Treaty on Stability, Coordination and Governance (TSCG), and the ‘Two Pack’ aiming to stabilize the EMU and prevent unsustainable public finances. Despite these efforts, the EU’s fiscal rules have been criticized for their complexity, rigidity, and lack of enforcement, leading to ineffective fiscal management. The Maastricht Treaty’s fiscal cap and public debt target, operationalized through the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP) since 1999, have been particularly scrutinized. Current proposals for reforming the EU’s fiscal framework are seen as insufficiently simple, flexible, and effective, potentially leading to unintended negative consequences. The essay also examines the role of the European Banking Union (EBU) in the fiscal policy framework, established in response to the financial crisis and designed to ensure the soundness of Europe’s financial sector. The EBU, with its Single Supervisory Mechanism (SSM) and Single Resolution Mechanism (SRM), plays a critical role in preventing banking sector problems from causing financial distress in EU countries.

Do Subnational Fiscal Rules Foster Fiscal Discipline? New Empirical Evidence from Europe

Fiscal rules have gained popularity as tools to strengthen debt sustainability by constraining policy discretion. However, their track record in the case of emerging markets is mixed, as setting up a fiscal rule has been no guarantee of debt stabilization. International experience and empirical evidence regarding the working of fiscal rules suggest that paying attention to the quality of rule design, the mechanisms behind better compliance, forward guidance on return to the rule, and the impacts on different dimensions of public finances (particularly spending composition) is key to enhancing fiscal rule performance. In addition, fiscal rules should be complemented with credible medium-term fiscal frameworks and independent fiscal councils that together set relevant policy anchors to support effectively the goal of safeguarding fiscal sustainability.

The Reform and Implementation of the Stability and Growth Pact

Fiscal policy decisions – in particular, those related to tax policy – have real impact on private sector activity. A central result from studies on taxation is that taxes affect behaviour and result in distortions on the choices of companies, workers and investors; thus, a country's tax system - and, therefore, variations in that system - reflects on the nation's economic growth. In Brazil, changes in tax legislation bringing about revenue losses at federal level must obey the fiscal neutrality rule, assuring compensation equivalent to the estimated decrease in revenue. Consequently, it becomes mandatory measure the corresponding revenue loss, so that the task of scorekeeping gains special contours in the fiscal control framework which aims to promote the balance of public accounts. This paper demonstrates that the static technique of estimating budgetary effects, coupled to the legal design that requires prompt compensation of the effects on revenue, discourages the production of tax rules seeking to promote efficiency and economic growth. The result was reached using a general equilibrium model stylized and calibrated for the Brazilian economy, by simulating permanent shocks on the average tax rates on consumption, labour, and capital income. Comparing the different methodologies, we concluded that the static scoring overestimate revenue losses in face of tax cuts, in parallel to results produced from dynamic estimations. The latter, in turn, allow to capture and differentiate – according to the tax base – the positive effects stemming from cuts in the tax burden on capital stock, labour supply, consumption and aggregate investment, ultimately identifying higher long-term economic growth. Dynamic scoring offers clarity about the extra-fiscal consequences on the economy that may yield from changes in the tax system, and provides a more accurate measurement of the normative change's budgetary effect, qualifying the debate and the political decisions in the country.
 Keywords: Taxation. Growth. Budgetary effect. Dynamic scoring.

Public debt and its development are key questions of public sector economics and fiscal policy. This paper uses the Synthetic Control Method to study how different large-scale steps of European integration and the establishment of the EU fiscal framework have affected government debt in EU Member States. The results point to a notable debt-restricting effect of EU membership and the introduction of the Stability and Growth Pact for a large majority of the studied country groupings as well as for individual countries. Outside of a few individual countries, the actual government debt levels are substantially lower than in the synthetic alternatives.

Stock flow adjustments in sovereign debt dynamics: The role of fiscal frameworks

The text describes the theoretical developments of the assignment rules regarding fiscal and monetary policies and the respective roles in macroeconomics stabilisation. Monetary policy emerged as the dominant policy, reducing the active macro-role of fiscal policy to taking care of debt sustainability. This consensus started to change, and a new view has appeared, giving a more active role to fiscal policy. The article concludes with a brief analysis of fiscal rules, followed by a discussion about the European Union fiscal framework, and its necessary revision.

Fiscal Transparency and Policy Rules in Poland

Stress testing the EU fiscal framework

Following the COVID-19 outbreak in Europe this spring and subsequent measures to contain the pandemic, the European Commission drastically revised its economic and fiscal forecasts. The Summer 2020 Economic Forecast projects that the euro area economy will contract by 8.7% in 2020. The coronavirus crisis is expected to push the general government deficit to about 8.5% of GDP this year. Even in an optimistic V-shaped recovery scenario with a GDP growth rate of 6.1% in 2021 due to the temporary nature of lockdown measures taken in 2020, the headline deficit is expected to decrease to about 3.5% of GDP. Furthermore, both the downturn and the rebound of economic activity are expected to be asymmetric across member states, exposing entrenched divergences. The recent outlook highlights the problem of pro-cyclical revisions of potential output and output gap estimates. Some economists warn that the current fiscal framework may lead to pro-cyclical and thus destabilising fiscal policies, a problem encountered in Southern Europe during the European sovereign debt crisis that has implications for the entire European Union. In order to avoid repeating past mistakes, the debate on how to reform European fiscal policy should be settled before the rules are re-enacted when the coronavirus crisis has passed.

The challenge for fiscal policy in Slovakia is to achieve fiscal consolidation in a way which supports the fragile recovery and protects spending on areas which are important for re-embarking on a trajectory of high trend growth and underpinning a catch-up in living standards. While the recently established fiscal rules have significantly improved the fiscal framework, a further strengthening in medium-term fiscal discipline will be necessary to avoid pro-cyclical fiscal policy. Raising the effectiveness of tax collection, reforming the tax structure towards less distortive taxes and making more out of available EU funds would also play a helpful role in a growth-friendly fiscal consolidation. Finally, more needs to be done to ensure an adequate prioritisation of spending and an efficient use of public revenues. In particular, stepping up the analytical monitoring, evaluation and assessment capacity in spending ministries should help to rein in wasteful spending. This Working Paper relates to the 2012 OECD Economic Survey of the Slovak Republic (www.oecd.org/eco/surveys/slovakia2012).

The Role of Public Debt in the UK Fiscal Rules

This paper analyses the effectiveness of bail-out mechanisms after the global crisis in comparison to Covid-19 pandemic crisis in the Eurozone economies. It seems that in the circumstances of global instability, laissesz-faire rules in economy are not enough, meaning that government interference is desirable and unavoidable. Although adopted in the Eurozone before the outbreak of the global crisis, the adopted clause on non-use of the bail-out mechanism has had to be ignored several times in the past. The research is based on descriptive statistical analysis using available data in relation to bail-out programs in the period 2008-2020 in the selected Eurozone economies. The research shows that governments appear to have learned at least three lessons from the global crisis: (a) need for quick implementation of emergency measures, (b) the bail-out mechanism was effective in reducing the budget deficit, however, has a negative impact on public debt, and (c) strengthening the fiscal framework of the Eurozone economies by defining supranational fiscal rules remain the essence of a stronger Eurozone and the European Union.