Assessing Long-Term Fiscal Developments : A New Approach

We use a new approach to assess long-term fiscal developments. By analyzing the time-varying behaviour of the two components of government spending and revenue - responsiveness and persistence - a feature not captured by automatic stabilisers, we are able to infer about the sources of fiscal deterioration (improvement). Drawing on quarterly data, we estimate recursively these components within a system of government revenue and spending equations using a Three-Stage Least Square method for eight European Union countries plus the US. The results suggest that significant changes in the fiscal stance (including those related to the current crisis) are reflected in the estimates of persistence and responsiveness