Page Title

Publications

To promote transparency and provide information, the Federal Planning Bureau regularly publishes the methods and results of its works. The publications are organised in different series, such as Outlooks, Working Papers and Planning Papers. Some reports can be consulted here, along with the Short Term Update newsletters that were published until 2015. You can search our publications by theme, publication type, author and year.

Improving the Stability and Growth Pact by integrating a proper accounting of public investments: a new attempt [ Working Paper 01-16 - ]

Improving the functioning of the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP) is back on the agenda, especially as the decline in public investment resulting from fiscal adjustment processes implemented according to the current Pact rules is seen as a brake on future economic growth. When discussions about a Pact revision in 2005 were under way, several major authors (for instance: Blanchard and Giavazzi in CEPR February 2004) suggested reverting to a golden rule under which the deficit would exclude investment expenditure, net of amortization. The Pact was revised in 2005 but this proposal was not adopted. This paper presents a new attempt to integrate a proper accounting of investment into the Pact by modifying the formula of the MTO (Medium Term Objective for the budget balance), without losing the other dimensions of the present formula: the partial provisioning of the so-called cost of ageing and the accelerated debt reduction for highly indebted countries. In this way, the public investment programme becomes a centrepiece of the structural policy of a government and not the first instrument of a cyclical policy.

  Authors


 
A : Author, C : Contributor

  Publication type

Working Papers

The Working Paper presents a study or analysis conducted by the Federal Planning Bureau on its own initiative.

  Related documents

    None

  Consult data

None

Please do not visit, its a trap for bots