Beyond 2015: Maintaining Ireland’s Public Finances on a Sustainable Path

In this note, three mechanical fiscal rules that are designed to maintain a sustainable path for the public finances are examined. Adherence to a strict numerical target for the deficit ratio has a procyclical effect on the economy’s growth rate. Building a safety margin into deficit targets in the manner of the Stability and Growth Pact allows the public finances to have a stabilising influence on the growth cycle and ensures a lower average government debt ratio is achieved over time. A debt target rule would result in a different path for the structural primary budget balance and the debt ratio over time even when the long run targets for those variables were the same as under the Pact.

Interpreting the Close to Balance Provision of the Stability and Growth Pact: Legal and Conceptual Aspects

This paper sets out to interpret the close to balance provision of the Stability and Growth Pact and what it requires of member states in setting their budgetary targets. Among the conclusions reached are that a budgetary position of close to balance or in surplus can be objectively calculated by deducting a safety margin from the Treaty deficit limit of 3 per cent of GDP. It is argued that the safety margin should at least take account of those factors whose impact on the budget balance in the medium term can not be forecast with certainty. In this respect, both cyclical and random factors must be included in the safety margin. This safety margin can be thought of as a minimum safety margin - it indicates the safety margin required to avoid an excessive deficit in the medium term. It is also argued that an additional, supplementary margin for long-term factors should be considered.

Large-Value Payment System Design and Risk Management

This article considers how wholesale (also often called large-value) payment systems can be organised, how they have evolved over recent decades and what are the forces currently at play in shaping settlement mechanisms.

Credit conditions and tenure choice: A cross-country examination [on housing market]. ESRI WP582, December 2017

An understanding of the house price to rent ratio and its determinants is important in assessing housing market developments and tenure choice therein. While the ratio is most usually explained by the user cost of capital, the influence of credit conditions on it has been added to econometric assessments in recent years. Using a new cross-country panel, we estimate the impact of variations in credit conditions on the house price to rent ratio between 1994 and 2015 on both a panel and country-by-country basis. This period was one of substantial cross-country house price movements as developments in standard explanatory variables, such as income levels, interest rates and demographics, were accompanied by major changes in credit markets. In line with other recent studies, our results establish the relevance of credit conditions to the house price to rent ratio at both panel and country levels. Moreover, the evidence points to credit conditions dominating the user cost of capital over the sample period, emphasising the need to include credit analysis when evaluating housing market developments

Commodity prices, money and inflation

The influence of commodity prices on consumer prices is usually seen as originating in commodity markets. We argue, however, that long run and short run relationships should exist between commodity prices, consumer prices and money and that the influence of commodity prices on consumer prices occurs through a money-driven overshooting of commodity prices being corrected over time. Using a cointegrating VAR framework and US data, our empirical findings are supportive of these relationships, with both commodity and consumer prices proportional to the money supply in the long run, commodity prices initially overshooting their new equilibrium values in response to a money supply shock, and the deviation of commodity prices from their equilibrium values having explanatory power for subsequent consumer price inflation. JEL Classification: E310, E510, E520impulse response analysis, overshooting, VECM

Fiscal fan charts - A tool for assessing member states’ (likely?) compliance with EU fiscal rules

This paper sets out a methodology for constructing fan charts for the government deficit and debt ratios over the medium-term. It relies on information contained in Stability/Convergence Programme Updates, a model of the relevant stochastic process (for example, the real GDP process) or processes, and a parameter estimate of the sensitivity of the primary budget balance to the output gap for the member state under consideration. A model of the dynamic deficit-debt relationship allows the impact of random output growth to work its way through the fiscal arithmetic in a consistent and traceable way to produce fan charts over a five-year forecast horizon. The initial set of fiscal fan charts included here for Ireland use the indicative public finance projections set out in the 2011 Update for Ireland. The range of possible fiscal outcomes in the charts assumes no fiscal policy response to any change in the budgetary position over the period such as could arise from changes in growth rates. This assumption of “no policy change” is a standard one in the construction of fan charts. Governments will, however, generally be in a position to adjust fiscal policy towards meeting a specific fiscal target, such as reaching a deficit position of less than 3 percent of GDP in the medium-term. A second set of fan charts is included which indicates how the probabilistic range of fiscal outcomes could be affected by a tightening of fiscal policy in 2013-2015.Programme Updates, fan charts, fiscal arithmetic, stochastic processes, prediction regions

A Segmented Markets Model of Inflation

Models of inflation usually have monetary policy impacting the economy through either an interest rate or a monetary/credit quantity channel but not through both. We argue that policy is transmitted via two distinct types of agents – those that are and that are not liquidity constrained. The implication is that both channels must be seen as complementary, joint indicators of inflation and must both be incorporated in models of inflation. We provide a formal representation of price level determination and behaviour in this segmented markets framework and evaluate it econometrically using US data. Length: 32 pages

Fiscal Sustainability When Time is on Your Side

With a favourable demographic profile, a budget balance currently in surplus and gross government debt under 60 per cent of GDP, Ireland would appear to be an economy with time on its side before any concerns about fiscal sustainability arise. In this paper, it is argued that favourable baseline prospects, nevertheless, provide no less a challenge for public finance management than dealing with poor baseline prospects. Two long-term policy options - reducing the debt and prefunding future pension liabilities - with a direct impact on the public finances are discussed. Both raise important issues for government and have implications for the financial and monetary system that need careful consideration. It is pointed out that member states face disincentives under EU fiscal rules to initiating public pensions prefunding schemes. The dynamics of fiscal sustainability in a fast-growing economy such as Ireland are also considered. It is argued that the EU fiscal rules may limit the attainment of the optimal growth path of an economy, particularly in economies where significant government investment may be warranted. With a wide range of growth rates and stage of development experiences in prospect across member states in future years, it is important that the fiscal rules be assessed as to whether they cater successfully for the diversity of investment requirements and public finance prospects in the EU.

Measuring Structural Budget Balances in a Fast Growing Economy: The Case of Ireland

The most popular method of measuring structural budget balances is the “gaps plus elasticities” approach. Abtract: In this paper, it is argued that the idiosyncratic features of an economy need to be accounted for properly when seeking to achieve good estimates of structural budget balances using this method. The first step in this approach involves measuring the economy’s potential output in order to identify an output gap that indicates the economy’s cyclical position. There are two main approaches to measuring potential output - a production function approach and a trend smoothing approach. The paper highlights how estimates of potential output growth can vary quite considerably between these two approaches in an economy such as Ireland due to the manner in which the high mobility of productive factors can impact on the production function approach and in how very high recent growth rates impact on the trend smoothing approach. The second step of the gap plus elasticities approach requires measuring the sensitivity of revenue and expenditure items to the output gap in the form of an elasticity. In the standard estimation procedure, these elasticities are generally assumed to remain constant over the cycle. Evidence from Ireland, however, suggests that an assumption of constant elasticity values is unlikely to be plausible in practice. On the contrary, cyclically-sensitive fiscal policy will introduce time-variance into elasticity measures. There may be a need, therefore, to assess and quantify the significance and consequences of time variance in elasticity measures and its implications for structural budget balance estimation.

Commodity Prices, Money and Inflation

The influence of commodity prices on consumer prices is usually seen as originating in commodity markets. We argue, however, that long run and short run relationships should exist between commodity prices, consumer prices and money and that the influence of commodity prices on consumer prices occurs through a money-driven overshooting of commodity prices being corrected over time. Using a cointegrating VAR framework and US data, our empirical findings are supportive of these relationships, with both commodity and consumer prices proportional to the money supply in the long run, commodity prices initially overshooting their new equilibrium values in response to a money supply shock, and the deviation of commodity prices from their equilibrium values having explanatory power for subsequent consumer price inflation.