Hooverism, Hyperstabilisation or Halfway-House? Describing Fiscal Policy in Central and Eastern European EU Members

Abstract

This paper develops a simple framework for describing fiscal policy where policymakers attempt to minimise deviations in output and budget balance from target values. Optimal policy is given by minimising a quadratic loss function subject to a linear structure of the economy. This policy can be viewed as weighted average of two polar cases - the case where the budget deficit adjusts to eliminate any deviations from potential output (hyperstabilisation), and the case where taxes and spending are determined exclusively by some budgetary goal (hooverism). We find some evidence of stabilisation for Poland, Latvia and Estonia. There is no evidence for the Czech Republic, Lithuania, Slovakia and Slovenia, suggesting that fiscal policy was being used for other objectives. The best fit is for Estonia, suggesting that a strict fiscal policy environment may not be incompatible with stabilising fiscal policy.