The Australian Real-Time Fiscal Database: An Overview and An Illustration of Its Use in Analysing Planned and Realised Fiscal Policies

Abstract

This paper describes a fiscal database for Australia including measures of government spending, revenue, deficits, debt and various sub-aggregates as initially published and subsequently revised. The data vintages are collated from various sources and provide a comprehensive description of the Australian fiscal environment as experienced in real-time. Methods are described which exploit the richness of the real-time datasets and they are illustrated through an analysis of the extent to which stated fiscal plans are realised in practice and through the estimation of fiscal multipliers which draw a distinction between policy responses and policy initiatives. We find predictable differences between plans and actual fiscal policy, consistent with a desire of the government to appear more prudent than in reality, and a larger multiplier for policy initiatives than implementation errors.