Revenue elasticities play a key role in forecasting, monitoring and analysing public finances under the European fiscal framework, which largely builds on cyclically adjusted indicators. This paper investigates whether there is evidence for dynamic - instead of the currently used static -...

This paper presents a framework for analysing the evolution of the structural government deficit estimated using the official EU methodology relevant for the Stability and Growth Pact. The focus of our framework lies in the analysis of the main driving forces of changes in estimated structural...

In the present paper I examine tax revenue projections in Germany over the period 1968 to 2012 with a focus on forecasting rationality. I show that tax revenue forecasts for the medium-term are upward biased. Overoptimistic revenue projections are particularly pronounced after the German...

In recent years, government revenues in many EU countries experienced significant and erratic changes, which, a priori, could not be fully explained by macroeconomic developments or by discretionary fiscal policy measures. We investigate this issue by estimating "unexplained" changes in tax and...

New monthly statistical indicators on government debt securities for euro area countries have now been developed on the basis of the information contained in the Centralised Securities Database (CSDB), an internal database available to the European System of Central Banks (ESCB). The CSDB is...

The euro area sovereign debt crisis has highlighted the importance of reducing public debt levels and building up sufficient fiscal buffers during normal and good times. It has also reaffirmed the need for a thorough debt sustainability analysis (DSA) to act as a warning system for national...

We analyze whether there are negative (positive) long-term effects of austerity measures (stimulus measures) on potential output growth. Based on the approach of Blanchard and Leigh (2013) and Fatás and Summers (2016) and using a novel dataset of narratively identified fiscal policy shocks, we...

This paper investigates how tax revenue elasticities develop with respect to their tax base and analyses the specific impact of the business cycle. The main novelty of the paper is to use revenue data net of discretionary tax measures. Based on an EU country panel for the period 2001-13, we...