- CAMBIO DE RÉGIMEN Y SOSTENIBILIDAD A LARGO PLAZO DE LA POLÍTICA FISCAL: EL CASO DE ESPAÑA

In this paper, the Spanish fiscal policy sustainability is tested for the period 1964-1996. The theoretical framework used in this paper draws from Quintos (1995) where a distinction between weak and strong conditions for deficit sustainability is pointed out. From an empirical point of view, new cointegration techniques allowing for structural breaks in the long-run relationships as well as in the cointegration parameters are implemented in order to reach a deeper insight. En este trabajo se contrasta la sostenibilidad de la política fiscal en la economía española para el periodo 1964-1996 utilizando el planteamiento teórico propuesto en Quintos (1995). Desde el punto de vista empírico, la novedad del estudio radica en la utilización de nuevas técnicas de cointegración que recogen la posibilidad de cambios estructurales, tanto en las relaciones de largo plazo como en los parámetros de cointegración.sostenibilidad, política fiscal, cointegración, cambio de régimen sustainability, fiscal policy, cointegration, regimen shifts.

Adjusting to the New Trade and Environmental Paradigm: The Case of the Philippines

The story of the Philippine environment during the past two decades is one of growing stress and resource degradation that has recently forced the Philippine polity and society to resolve the problem. This paper seeks to contribute to a better understanding of the issue of sustainable development by exploring the linkage between environment and trade both domestically and internationally from the Philippine perspective.natural resources and environment, trade sector, liberalization, environmental issues

Debt sustainability, structural breaks and non-linear fiscal adjustment: A testing application to Greek fiscal policy

Non-linear public debt adjustment and structural breaks in fiscal policy may affect tests of public debt sustainability. Existing studies address these issues separately. No study has considered both. We address this gap by focusing on Greece, one of the most highly-indebted EMU countries. We find evidence of previously undetected non-linear fiscal adjustment; and two structural breaks in fiscal policy. Excluding these from the analysis, or allowing for non-linearities only, affects the nature of the empirical findings. Accounting for both, we find Greek public debt to be sustainable. This is in contrast to the findings of previous studies on Greece

Government solvency: revisiting some EMU countries

Corsetti and Roubini (1991) reported that the government finances of Greece, Ireland, Italy and the Netherlands did not satisfy the intertemporal budget constraint (IBC). We re-examine this issue by utilizing a new empirical approach and extended data set. Structural shifts, an issue which Corsetti and Roubini were unable to address due to the lack of suitable econometric methods, are tackled. We show that: (i) government finances of all four countries satisfy the IBC and this finding is robust to different time horizons; (ii) multiple structural shifts, most of which correspond to important policy changes, did occur in the fiscal path of these countries; and (iii) the overall effect of structural shifts has been to strengthen the evidence supporting IBC. We also find a clear positive Maastricht effect on IBC

Structural Change in Tail Behavior and the Asian Financial Crisis

This paper explores tests of the hypothesis that the tail thickness of a distribution is constant over time. Using Hill's conditional maximum likelihood estimator for the tail index of a distribution, tests of tail shape constancy are constructed that allow for an unknown breakpoint. The recursive test is shown to be inconsistent in one direction, and only a one-sided test is recommended. Specifically, the test can be used when the alternative hypothesis is that the tail index decreases over time. A rolling and sequential version of the test is consistent in both directions. The methods are illustrated on recent stock price data for Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia. The period covers the recent Asian financial crisis and enables us to assess whether breakpoints in domestic asset return distributions are related to known changes in institutional arrangements in the foreign currency markets of these countries.Extreme value theory, Hill estimator, Structural change, Tail index estimation

Canadian Money Demand Functions Cointegration¨CRank Stability

This paper applies conventional tests (Johansen, 1995) and new tests (Chao and Phillips, 1999) for cointegration to long¨Crun money demand functions using historical Canadian data back to 1872. If cointegration is found, recently proposed tests by Quintos (1998a) for stability of the cointegration rank are carried out. The paper focuses on two spans of data: one span starting in 1872, the other in 1957 or 1968. Annual data are used for the former span, and annual and quarterly data for the latter. The preferred money demand specification involves M1.Vector error-correction; unknown change points; long spans of monetary data

On the sustainability of the Spanish public budget performance

In this paper, we address the issue of whether the current fiscal policy in Spain is sustainable. For this purpose we apply traditional empirical tests of fiscal sustainability proposed in the literature and, in addition, we introduce a deeper univariate analysis of the series involved. Our results show that a structural break seems to have taken place gradually in the Spanish budget performance, allowing to verifying the intertemporal borrowing constraint in a «strong sense», which means that no problems in marketing public debt are expected to arise if fiscal variables follow the pattern of the past in the future. Classification-JEL : E60, F41,: Sustainability, cointegration, structural breaks, intertemporal borrowing constraint.