In the last twenty years Portugal struggled to keep public finances under control, notably in containing primary spending. We use a new quarterly dataset covering 1979:1-2007:4, and estimate a Bayesian Structural Autoregression model to analyze the macroeconomic effects of fiscal policy. The...

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 - we are able to infer about the sources of fiscal behaviour. Drawing on quarterly data we estimate...