The recent fears of a sovereign debt crisis have spurred interest in the sustainability of public debt. There are two different approaches to the assessment of sustainability: the use of sustainability gap indicators (Blanchard et al., 1990) and the time series approach (Trehan and Walsh, 1988)....

Fiscal sustainability is a central topic for most of the transition economics of Eastern Europe. This paper focuses on a particular country : Poland. The main purpose is to investigate, empirically, whether the post-transition fiscal policy is consistent with the intertemporal budget constraint,...

In this paper we propose an index of the fiscal stance suitable for practical use in short-term policy making. The index is based on a comparison of a target level of the debt-GDP ratio for a given finite horizon with a forecast of the debt-GDP ratio based on a VAR formed from the government...

Scandinavian countries are often portrayed in policy debates as model examples having shown how to square concerns for efficiency and equity. The core principle of the Scandinavian welfare model is an individual entitlement to public sector provisions combined with collective financing via...

We use a 3-step analysis to assess the sustainability of public finances in the EU27. Firstly, we perform the SURADF specific panel unit root test to investigate the mean-reverting behaviour of general government expenditures and revenues ratios. Secondly, we apply the bootstrap panel...

We assess the sustainability of public finances in the EU15 using stationarity and cointegration analysis. Specifically, we use panel unit root tests of the first and second generation allowing in some cases for structural breaks. We also apply modern panel cointegration techniques developed by...