The track record of fiscal forecasting in the EU

• Autor(a) principal: Afonso, António
• Data de Publicação: 2015
• Outros Autores: Silva, Jorge
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.5/25555
• topic: Budget Balance; Ratio Forecasts; European Comission; 1998-2011; Investment Growth; Fiscal Rules

We study the deviations between the budget balance ratio forecasts and outcomes in the European Commission semiannual vintage forecasts for the period 1998-2011. Our main conclusions are: i) there is evidence that the deviations of real GDP and inflation can explain the deviations of the budget balance ratio; ii) total investment growth deviations are also important; iii) unemployment rate deviations are not statistically relevant; iv) the fiscal rule index is not a statistically significant determinant of the budget forecast deviations; iv) higher than forecasted ratios of expenditure, revenue and debt for the EU are relevant; v) and expenditure-to-GDP deviations were larger than the revenue-to-GDP ones for the EU.