Conditions for a Sustainable Counter-Cyclical Fiscal Policy: The Case of Spain

Opposite to mainstream economics, (post-) Keynesian economics has defended the need of a discretionary fiscal policy that helps to maintain economic activity at a full employment level, offsetting the cyclical deviations from that level of output. In this sense, it is implicitly assumed that any discretionary management of public finance is, by definition, efficient. The Spanish case shows that public authorities can make an inefficient use of the discretionary room of fiscal policy, thus exacerbating the existing macroeconomic and fiscal imbalances. Consequently, there is a need for rules that constrain the discretionary management of public finance.