Indicators of Fiscal Policy

During the past decade, the formulation of fiscal policy has been increasingly founded on medium-term considerations associated with public debt and economic efficiency. In this regard, this paper, and the ones by Olivier Blanchard and Edward Gramlich in the same Working Paper Series, considers the implications of this development for the overall appraisal of fiscal policy in OECD countries. The paper begins with a review of the existing measure of discretionary change in budget positions and proposes refinements to it. The paper then introduces and illustrates several new indicators designed to help assess the sustainability of policies in the short- and medium-run and their first-round impacts on aggregate demand ...