Sobre el déficit público en España y en la zona Euro (2000–2011)

This article presents, first, a graphical analysis of the well-known equality of saving and investment for the cases of Spain and the Eurozone between 2000 and 2011. Then, correlation and Granger causality between government deficit and private deficit in both economies is analyzed. Since public deficit in the Spanish economy, as well as in the Euro zone, comes from the deterioration of gross government savings, we proceed to study the variation and the contribution of its main components (according to a decomposition ​​from ESA95). Among other results, it is observed that the main cause for further deterioration in public savings in the Spanish economy is the increasing spending. Moreover, within the expenditure items, the increase of social spending since the beginning of the crisis has been much higher in Spain than in the Eurozone (but not the increase of public final consumption, which has been significantly lower in the Spanish case).