Sustainability of Portuguese Fiscal Policy in Historical Perspective

Abstract

This paper analyses the sustainability of Portuguese public finances, making use of a long dataset with more than a full century of observations. The use of such a long dataset is appropriate because both unit root and cointegration tests require a long period of data. The sustainability testing procedure is based on unit root and cointegration tests. We find considerable evidence in favour of sustainability for the 1903-2003 period. The overall conclusion of sustainability for the 1903-2003 period is not maintained for the more recent 1975-2003 period, which is characterised by the largest GDP deficit ratios of our sample. This latter period appears to signal a shift to an unsustainable path in Portuguese fiscal policy. Hence, our results suggest that fiscal consolidation efforts must, in fact, be continued in Portugal.fiscal sustainability, sustainability of public debt, intertemporal budget constraint, government deficits and debt, Portugal