Fiscal Policy Reaction in the Short Term for Assessing Fiscal Sustainability in the Long Runin Central and Eastern European Countries

The aim of this paper is to analyze how the primary government balance in Central and Eastern European countries reacts in the short term, in order to assess fiscal sustainability in the long run. For the purpose of this study, a fiscal reaction function is used. Given the different orders of integration of the variables involved in the model, modified forms of the fiscal reaction function are considered. The results show that for Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, and Lithuania fiscal policy reacts as expected – in the sense that governments have the ability to run a primary surplus – in the short term. This action makes fiscal sustainability easier to achieve in the long run. On the other hand, for Latvia, Poland, Romania, and Slovakia, sustainable fiscal policy will be more difficult to attain given the opposite response of governments to public debt shocks. In these countries, severe fiscal adjustments should be made in order to reach fiscal sustainability in the long run.fiscal sustainability, fiscal reaction function, primary balance, public debt, budget balance

Financial Strategies for the Romanian Local Public Administration

<p>Public administration reform at all governmental levels constitutes an important component of the transformation process from a centralized system to democratic governance. This process involved important legislative and institutional changes in order to fulfill the principles of a market economy and the European Union standards based on transparency, predictability, accountability, adaptability and effectiveness. Therefore, in a continuing extension of the citizens’ needs, Romanian public administration reform, especially at local level, is concentrated on quality of public services based on citizens’ needs and increased performances in the context of a necessary decrease of budget expenditure, taking into consideration the actual financial constraint. In this context, it is useful to investigate the financial strategies of the local public administration based on the Romanian experiences that consisted in important public resources decline because of the financial crisis.</p