Fifty Years of Fiscal Planning and Implementation in the Netherlands

Beetsma, Roel; Giuliodori, Massimo; Walschot, Mark; Wierts, Peter

doi:10.2139/ssrn.1949706

Cited by 13 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…Hence, as nowcasts form the starting point for the enforcement procedures of the SGP, 9 we may expect the magnitude of the revision errors to depend on the vigor with which the Pact is enforced 10 . Second, the case study by Beetsma et al (2010) for the Netherlands leads us to conjecture that tighter national fiscal rules, which serve as a self‐enforced commitment device implying that the Ministry of Finance takes more responsibility for “prudent” fiscal outcomes, produce less overoptimism at the nowcast stage and, hence, revision errors that are smaller in absolute magnitude. Third, under those circumstances when the government has an incentive to “massage” fiscal figures at the nowcast stage, we would expect the absolute size of revision errors to be negatively related to the degree of transparency of the budget.…”

Section: Conceptual Framework and Decompositionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

From Budgetary Forecasts to Ex Post Fiscal Data: Exploring the Evolution of Fiscal Forecast Errors in the European Union

Beetsma¹,

Bluhm²,

Giuliodori³

et al. 2012

Contemporary Economic Policy

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This paper splits the ex post error in the budget balance, defined as the final budget figure minus the planned figure, into implementation and revision errors, and investigates the determinants of these errors. The implementation error is the difference between the nowcast, published toward the end of the year of budget implementation, and the planned budget, while the revision error is the difference between the final figure and the nowcast. The split takes account of differences in reporting incentives at the different budgeting stages. The predictive content of fiscal plans is important, because it determines the reliability of the budget, while that of the nowcasts is important also because these figures are an input for the next budget and may contain important signals about the fiscal stance. Implementation and revision errors may arise for political and strategic reasons. Our results suggest that an improvement in the quality of institutions, whether measured by the tightness of national fiscal rules, the medium‐term budgetary framework or budgetary transparency, increases the quality of budgetary reporting at both the planning and the nowcast stage. This supports the recently adopted requirements on national fiscal frameworks. It also strengthens the case for a close monitoring by the European Commission of national budgeting. (JEL E6, H6)

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Section: Conceptual Framework and Decompositionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

From Budgetary Forecasts to Ex Post Fiscal Data: Exploring the Evolution of Fiscal Forecast Errors in the European Union

Beetsma¹,

Bluhm²,

Giuliodori³

et al. 2012

Contemporary Economic Policy

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“…Beetsma et al . () explore fiscal planning and budget implementation in the Netherlands using a real‐time data set from the annual budget over the period 1958–2009. The paper shows that, in the Netherlands, planned balances are, on average, unbiased.…”

Section: Determinants Of Real‐time Forecast Errorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Real‐time Data and Fiscal Policy Analysis: A Survey of the Literature

Cimadomo

2014

Journal of Economic Surveys

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This paper surveys the empirical research on fiscal policy analysis based on real‐time data. This literature can be broadly divided into four groups that focus on: (1) the statistical properties of revisions in fiscal data; (2) the political and institutional determinants of projection errors by governments; (3) the reaction of fiscal policies to the business cycle and (4) the use of real‐time fiscal data in structural vector autoregression (VAR) models. It emerges that, first, fiscal revisions are large and initial releases are biased estimates of final values. Secondly, strong fiscal rules and institutions lead to more accurate releases of fiscal data and smaller deviations of fiscal outcomes from government plans. Thirdly, the cyclical stance of fiscal policies is estimated to be more ‘counter‐cyclical’ when real‐time data are used instead of ex post data. Fourthly, real‐time data can be useful for the identification of fiscal shocks. Finally, it is shown that existing real‐time fiscal data sets cover only a limited number of countries and variables. For example, real‐time data for developing countries are generally unavailable. In addition, real‐time data on European countries are often missing, especially with respect to government revenues and expenditures. Therefore, more work is needed in this field.

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“…For example, Loukoianova, Vahey, and Wakerly (2003) -one of the first papers to carry out fiscal policy analysis with real-time data -employed a real-time dataset for the US government primary balance which was collected by the authors based on another official publication, the 'Economic Report of the US President.' For the Netherlands, Beetsma, Giuliodori, Walschot, and Wierts (2010) collected fiscal plans released by the Dutch Ministry of Finance and reported in annual budget laws.…”

Section: Available Real-time Datasets For Fiscal Variablesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Finally, Beetsma, Giuliodori, Walschot, and Wierts (2010) explore fiscal planning and budget implementation in the Netherlands, using a real-time dataset from the annual budget over the period . The paper shows that, for the Netherlands, planned balances are on average unbiased, although they are overoptimistic during the first half of the sample and too pessimistic during the second half of the sample.…”

Section: Determinants Of Data Revisions and Of Real-time Forecast Errorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Real-Time Data and Fiscal Policy Analysis: A Survey of the Literature

Cimadomo¹

2011

Working Paper (Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia)

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This paper surveys the empirical research on fiscal policy analysis based on real-time data. This literature can be broadly divided in three groups that focus on: (1) the statistical properties of revisions in fiscal data; (2) the political and institutional determinants of fiscal data revisions and of one-year-ahead projection errors by governments and (3) the reaction of fiscal policies to the business cycle. It emerges that, first, fiscal data revisions are large and initial releases are biased estimates of final values. Second, the presence of strong fiscal rules and institutions leads to relatively more accurate releases of fiscal data and small deviations of fiscal outcomes from government plans. Third, the cyclical stance of fiscal policies is estimated to be more 'counter-cyclical' when real-time data are used instead of ex-post data. Finally, more work is needed for the development of real-time datasets for fiscal policy analysis. In particular, a comprehensive real-time dataset including fiscal variables for industrialized (and possibly developing) countries, published and maintained by central banks or other institutions, is still missing.

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Fifty Years of Fiscal Planning and Implementation in the Netherlands

Cited by 13 publications

References 18 publications

From Budgetary Forecasts to Ex Post Fiscal Data: Exploring the Evolution of Fiscal Forecast Errors in the European Union

From Budgetary Forecasts to Ex Post Fiscal Data: Exploring the Evolution of Fiscal Forecast Errors in the European Union

Real‐time Data and Fiscal Policy Analysis: A Survey of the Literature

Real-Time Data and Fiscal Policy Analysis: A Survey of the Literature

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