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...

This paper empirically analyzes the political, institutional and economic sources of public deficit volatility. Using the system-GMM estimator for linear dynamic panel data models and a sample of 125 countries analyzed from 1980 to 2006, we show that higher public deficit volatility is typically...