Nothing Special   »   [go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/zewdip/12067.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Debt rule federalism: The case of Germany

Author

Listed:
  • Ciaglia, Sarah
  • Heinemann, Friedrich
Abstract
In 2009, Germany introduced a new debt rule in its federal constitution (Grundgesetz). The socalled 'debt brake' prescribes a balanced budget for both the federal level and the states. However, the states have leeway regarding transposition and specification of the national requirements into their own state constitutions and budgetary laws. This analysis presents a comprehensive comparison of the 16 state provisions. We develop an indicator which quantifies the stringency of state rules (Strength of Fiscal Rule Indicator). Two results emerge: First, despite the common constitutional rule at the federal level, the analysis reveals a considerable heterogeneity across German states. Second, several highly indebted states miss the chance to make their fiscal regime more credible. This finding corresponds to the disincentives of the German federation. Due to bailout-guarantees enshrined in German federalism, German states do not have incentives to impress bond markets through particularly strict budgetary rules.

Suggested Citation

  • Ciaglia, Sarah & Heinemann, Friedrich, 2012. "Debt rule federalism: The case of Germany," ZEW Discussion Papers 12-067, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:zewdip:12067
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/66119/1/729459888.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Heinemann, Friedrich & Osterloh, Steffen & Kalb, Alexander, 2014. "Sovereign risk premia: The link between fiscal rules and stability culture," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 110-127.
    2. Iara, Anna & Wolff, Guntram B., 2014. "Rules and risk in the Euro area," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 34(C), pages 222-236.
    3. Friedrich Heinemann, 2010. "Eine Gabe an St. Nimmerlein?– Zur zeitlichen Dimension der Schuldenbremse," Perspektiven der Wirtschaftspolitik, Verein für Socialpolitik, vol. 11(3), pages 246-259, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Reischmann Markus, 2014. "Staatsverschuldung in Extrahaushalten: Historischer Überblick und Implikationen für die Schuldenbremse in Deutschland," Perspektiven der Wirtschaftspolitik, De Gruyter, vol. 15(2), pages 171-181, June.
    2. Niklas Potrafke & Marina Riem & Christoph Schinke, 2016. "Debt Brakes in the German States: Governments’ Rhetoric and Actions," German Economic Review, Verein für Socialpolitik, vol. 17(2), pages 253-275, May.
    3. Asatryan, Zareh & Castellón, César & Stratmann, Thomas, 2018. "Balanced budget rules and fiscal outcomes: Evidence from historical constitutions," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 167(C), pages 105-119.
    4. Dominik Hecker & Dano Meiske & Niklas Potrafke & Marina Riem & Christoph Schinke, 2016. "Schuldenbremsen in den deutschen Bundesländern: Worte und Taten der Landesregierungen," ifo Schnelldienst, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, vol. 69(02), pages 14-22, January.
    5. Markus Reischmann, 2016. "Empirical Studies on Public Debt and Fiscal Transfers," ifo Beiträge zur Wirtschaftsforschung, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, number 63.
    6. Yeter, Mustafa & Heinemann, Friedrich, 2014. "The effects of fiscal rules on public finances and their identification," VfS Annual Conference 2014 (Hamburg): Evidence-based Economic Policy 100425, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. John Thornton & Chrysovalantis Vasilakis, 2018. "Fiscal Rules And Government Borrowing Costs: International Evidence," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 56(1), pages 446-459, January.
    2. Maltritz, Dominik & Wüste, Sebastian, 2015. "Determinants of budget deficits in Europe: The role and relations of fiscal rules, fiscal councils, creative accounting and the Euro," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 222-236.
    3. Reuter, Wolf Heinrich, 2019. "When and why do countries break their national fiscal rules?," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 125-141.
    4. Havlik, Annika & Heinemann, Friedrich & Helbig, Samuel & Nover, Justus, 2022. "Dispelling the shadow of fiscal dominance? Fiscal and monetary announcement effects for euro area sovereign spreads in the corona pandemic," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 122(C).
    5. Heinemann, Friedrich & Janeba, Eckhard & Todtenhaupt, Maximilian, 2022. "Incumbency and expectations of fiscal rule compliance: Evidence from surveys of German policy makers," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 72(C).
    6. Juan Carlos Hatchondo & Leonardo Martinez & Francisco Roch, 2022. "Fiscal Rules and the Sovereign Default Premium," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 14(4), pages 244-273, October.
    7. Niklas Potrafke, 2023. "The Economic Consequences of Fiscal Rules," CESifo Working Paper Series 10765, CESifo.
    8. Capraru, Bogdan & Georgescu, George & Sprincean, Nicu, 2023. "Fiscal Rules, Independent Fiscal Institutions, and Sovereign Risk," Working Papers of Romania Fiscal Council 230201, Romania Fiscal Council.
    9. Fabio Sigrist & Patrick Köchli & Christoph Lengwiler, 2018. "Determinants of municipal loan spreads: empirical evidence from Switzerland," Financial Markets and Portfolio Management, Springer;Swiss Society for Financial Market Research, vol. 32(2), pages 143-166, May.
    10. Brändle, Thomas & Elsener, Marc, 2023. "Do fiscal rules matter? A survey on recent evidence," Working papers 2023/07, Faculty of Business and Economics - University of Basel.
    11. Heinemann, Friedrich & Janeba, Eckhard & Schröder, Christoph & Streif, Frank, 2016. "Fiscal rules and compliance expectations – Evidence for the German debt brake," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 142(C), pages 11-23.
    12. Thornton, John & Vasilakis, Chrysovalantis, 2017. "The impact of fiscal rules on sovereign risk premia: International evidence," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 20(C), pages 63-67.
    13. Maltritz Dominik & Wüste Sebastian, 2020. "What Determines Fiscal Deficits in Europe? The Impact and Interaction of EMU Membership, Fiscal Rules, Fiscal Councils and Creative Accounting," Review of Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 71(1), pages 15-41, April.
    14. Moessinger, Marc-Daniel & Feld, Lars P. & Kalb, Alexander & Osterloh, Steffen, 2013. "Sovereign Bond Market Reactions to Fiscal Rules and No-Bailout Clauses The Swiss Experience," VfS Annual Conference 2013 (Duesseldorf): Competition Policy and Regulation in a Global Economic Order 79807, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    15. Augustin, Patrick & Sokolovski, Valeri & Subrahmanyam, Marti G. & Tomio, Davide, 2022. "In sickness and in debt: The COVID-19 impact on sovereign credit risk," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 143(3), pages 1251-1274.
    16. Pietro Alessandrini & Michele Fratianni & Andrew Hughes Hallett & Andrea Presbitero, 2014. "External Imbalances and Fiscal Fragility in the Euro Area," Open Economies Review, Springer, vol. 25(1), pages 3-34, February.
    17. Feld, Lars P. & Schmidt, Christoph M. & Schnabel, Isabel & Truger, Achim & Wieland, Volker, 2019. "Den Strukturwandel meistern. Jahresgutachten 2019/20 [Dealing with Structural Change. Annual Report 2019/20]," Annual Economic Reports / Jahresgutachten, German Council of Economic Experts / Sachverständigenrat zur Begutachtung der gesamtwirtschaftlichen Entwicklung, volume 127, number 201920.
    18. Yeter, Mustafa & Heinemann, Friedrich, 2014. "The effects of fiscal rules on public finances and their identification," VfS Annual Conference 2014 (Hamburg): Evidence-based Economic Policy 100425, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    19. Lars P. Feld & Alexander Kalb & Marc-Daniel Moessinger & Steffen Osterloh, 2013. "Sovereign Bond Market Reactions to Fiscal Rules and No-Bailout Clauses - The Swiss Experience," CESifo Working Paper Series 4195, CESifo Group Munich.
    20. Feld, Lars P. & Kalb, Alexander & Moessinger, Marc-Daniel & Osterloh, Steffen, 2017. "Sovereign bond market reactions to no-bailout clauses and fiscal rules – The Swiss experience," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 319-343.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    fiscal rules; debt brake; Germany; fiscal federalism;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • H63 - Public Economics - - National Budget, Deficit, and Debt - - - Debt; Debt Management; Sovereign Debt
    • H74 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations - - - State and Local Borrowing
    • H77 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations - - - Intergovernmental Relations; Federalism

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:zbw:zewdip:12067. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/zemande.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.