Are Italy’s primary-surplus policies compatible with the sustainability of government debt? We address the question by examining historical budget data in post-unification Italy, from 1861 to 2016. Controlling for temporary output, temporary spending and world war-time periods in assessing whether primary surpluses significantly reacted to changes in debt, we find the following results: (i) the hypothesis of nonlinearity in the surplus-debt relationship significantly outperforms the hypothesis of linearity; (ii) there exists a threshold level in the debt-GDP ratio, approximately equal to 105 percent, above which Italian fiscal policy makers are concerned with corrective actions to avoid insolvency; (iii) the robustly positive reaction of primary surpluses to debt beyond the trigger point ensures fiscal sustainability.
Evaluating the sustainability of Italian public finances / Postigliola, Michele; Piergallini, Alessandro. - In: THE NORTH AMERICAN JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS AND FINANCE. - ISSN 1062-9408. - (2020). [10.1016/j.najef.2020.101180]
Evaluating the sustainability of Italian public finances
Michele Postigliola
;Alessandro Piergallini
2020
Abstract
Are Italy’s primary-surplus policies compatible with the sustainability of government debt? We address the question by examining historical budget data in post-unification Italy, from 1861 to 2016. Controlling for temporary output, temporary spending and world war-time periods in assessing whether primary surpluses significantly reacted to changes in debt, we find the following results: (i) the hypothesis of nonlinearity in the surplus-debt relationship significantly outperforms the hypothesis of linearity; (ii) there exists a threshold level in the debt-GDP ratio, approximately equal to 105 percent, above which Italian fiscal policy makers are concerned with corrective actions to avoid insolvency; (iii) the robustly positive reaction of primary surpluses to debt beyond the trigger point ensures fiscal sustainability.File | Dimensione | Formato | |
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