We assess the specific need (or its absence) of a country to implement a fiscal consolidation programme by focusing specifically on their degree of success, notably in terms of fiscal sustainability. The “need” to consolidate is based on having a primary balance above or below the...

We assess the link between fiscal sustainability coefficients, namely the responses of the primary government balance and the global government balance to the debt-to-GDP ratio, and the response of government revenues to government expenditures. For 22 OECD developed countries we use annual data...