Democratic Accountability in Times of Crisis: Executive Power, Fiscal Policy and COVID-19

We examine the performance of four parliamentary democracies - Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the UK - as they confront the need for a substantial fiscal policy response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Our research covers the period 1 January 2020 to 30 June 2020. We score the four countries on nine components of democratic accountability using Mark Philp's distinction between formal and political accountability. We conclude, first, that to appreciate the nuanced character of accountability, it is important to have a set of operational measures that identify specific aspects of performance. Second, preparation is important for resilience: countries that demonstrated strong accountability before the pandemic maintained relatively high accountability standards during the crisis;weaker accountability mechanisms showed less resistance to the expanding power of the executive. Finally, it is easier to be accountable when outcomes are favourable, but favourable outcomes include adherence to the norms of democratic accountability. © The Author(s), 2021.

Central bank credibility during COVID-19: Evidence from Japan

Japanese realized and expected inflation has been below the Bank of Japan's two percent target for many years. We examine the impact of announcements of expansionary monetary and fiscal policy under COVID-19 on inflation expectations from an arbitrage-free term structure model of nominal and real yields. We find that both types of policies failed to lift inflation expectations, which instead declined notably over the pandemic period and are projected to only slowly revert back to Bank of Japan target levels. Our results therefore illustrate the challenges faced in raising well-anchored low inflation expectations. © 2022

US policy responses to the COVID-19 pandemic and sectoral stock indices: A fractional integration approach

This paper uses fractional integration to assess the impact of US policy responses to the COVID-19 pandemic on 10 US sectoral stock indices from 1 January 2020 to 11 June 2021. The results provide evidence of mean reversion in most cases and suggest that the Effective Federal Funds Rate and monetary and fiscal announcements are the most effective policy tools. © 2022 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

The Value of Internal Control during a Crisis: Evidence from Enterprise Resilience

Internal control is an important internal governance mechanism of enterprises and plays an important role in preventing and controlling corporate risks. This paper utilizes COVID-19 shocks and uses data from listed companies in China for 2019–2021 in order to study the impact of internal control on enterprise resilience and its functioning mechanism. The findings show that internal control significantly improves enterprise resilience during a crisis. By using firm characteristic quantile regressions, it is found that under a crisis, larger firms with sufficient cash flow from operating activities are more protected by internal control and more resilient. Mechanistic analysis suggests that internal control further increases enterprise resilience by improving resource allocation efficiency, reducing operating risk, and increasing innovation output. Further analysis shows that government support can enhance the resilience of firms during crises through tax and fiscal policies;a better business environment enhances firms' ability to withstand risks in crisis situations and helps them gain a competitive advantage in crisis situations. Based on this, this paper provides empirical evidence for revising and improving the internal control system of enterprises to reduce the negative impact of public health emergencies in the context of epidemics. © 2022 by the authors.

The COVID-19 pandemic and financial markets in Central Europe: Macroeconomic measures and international policy spillovers

This paper investigates the effects of macroeconomic policy announcements on financial markets in three Central European economies: Czechia, Hungary, and Poland (CE-3). We focus on the unprecedented stabilisation policies implemented from March to December 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, including unconventional monetary measures and large stimulus programs. Detailed categories of monetary and fiscal measures are introduced into vector autoregressions with exogenous regressors and dynamic conditional correlations, which we estimate using daily data. This allows us to control for policy spillovers from abroad, as well as global risk factors and pandemic-related variables. We find that, in general, macroeconomic policy measures implemented in the CE-3 countries played an important role in stabilising financial markets during the pandemic. We uncover several notable patterns in the reaction of markets to anti-crisis measures across the region. The impact of the monetary policy announcements on 10-year sovereign bond yields was more substantial than on stock market returns and exchange rate returns. The communication of the unconventional tools proved effective in lowering the bond yields. Interestingly, we document that the effects of non-standard measures for some variables, such as the exchange rate, can be qualitatively different from those resulting from a conventional monetary expansion. Even though the domestic monetary events became more important than the fiscal ones, the latter proved relevant for financial market returns, especially when large-scale immediate fiscal measures and tax deferrals were introduced. We also show that the CE-3 economies were subject to the cross-border transmission of policy announcement effects from the Euro Area and the US, although the magnitude of these effects was smaller than expected and varied across the CE-3 countries.

Effect of excise tax on sugar-sweetened beverages in Catalonia, Spain, three and a half years after its introduction.

BACKGROUND: The World Health Organisation urges countries to levy specific excise taxes on SSBs. Currently, more than 50 countries have introduced some type of tax on SSBs. In March 2017, the Autonomous Region of Catalonia approved the introduction of a tiered excise tax on SSBs for public health reasons. To evaluate the effect of the Catalonian excise tax on the price and purchase of sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) and their possible substitutes, i.e., non-sugar-sweetened beverages (NSSBs) and bottled water, three and half years after its introduction, and 1 year after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. METHODS: We analysed purchase data on soft drinks, fruit drinks and water, sourced from the Ministry of Agriculture food-consumption panel, in a random sample of 12,500 households across Spain. We applied the synthetic control method to infer the causal impact of the intervention, based on a Bayesian structural time-series model which predicts the counterfactual response that would have occurred in Catalonia, had no intervention taken place. RESULTS: As compared to the predicted (counterfactual) response, per capita purchases of SSBs fell by 0.17 l three and a half years after implementing the SSB tax in Catalonia, a 16.7% decline (95% CI: - 23.18, - 8.74). The mean SSB price rose by 0.11 €/L, an 11% increase (95% CI: 9.0, 14.1). Although there were no changes in mean NSSB prices, NSSB consumption rose by 0.19 l per capita, a 21.7% increase (95% CI: 18.25, 25.54). There were no variations in the price or consumption of bottled water. The effects were progressively greater over time, with SSB purchases decreasing by 10.4% at 1 year, 12.3% at 2 years, 15.3% at 3 years, and 16.7% at three and a half years of the tax's introduction. CONCLUSIONS: The Catalonian SSB excise tax had a sustained and progressive impact over time, with a fall in consumption of as much as 16.7% three and half years after its introduction. The observed NSSB substitution effect should be borne in mind when considering the application of this type of tax to the rest of Spain.

Fiscal risks and their impact on banks' capital buffers in South Africa

South Africa's fiscal balances have deteriorated significantly over the last decade, although the economy has been recording disappointing economic growth rates even prior to the COVID-19 crisis. In this paper, we estimate a series of equations to test how sovereign risk premia affect capital buffers, while controlling for variables identified in the literature, such as size of banks and the economic cycle. Unlike other studies, we use actual capital buffers. We show that these are substantively different to the proxy buffers calculated using the common approach in the literature, indicating that results based on proxy measures should be interpreted with caution. Our overall results show a positive relationship between the sovereign risk premium and capital buffers. This suggests that banks are accumulating capital to mitigate against fiscal and other domestic policy risks. It is likely that this is contributing to higher lending rates.

Mecanismos fiscales en el marco de la COVID-19: una mirada a las desigualdades económicas en América Latina

El objetivo del presente artículo fue identificar las políticas fiscales implementadas en América Latina, sus efectos y el enfoque en la visualización de las desigualdades económicas en el marco de la pandemia originada por la COVID-19. Para tal propósito, la metodología desarrollada consistió en la revisión de literatura de los años 2020 y 2021 en las bases de datos especializadas Scopus y Redalyc en investigación y estadísticas temáticas;para ello, se tomaron como muestra los países con mayores resultados en cuanto a investigaciones realizadas: Argentina, Brasil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, México y Perú. Los resultados indicaron que, aunque las estructuras tributarias en estos países son similares, el mayor recaudo, en años recientes, estuvo en Brasil y México;en cuanto a las medidas tomadas en política fiscal y monetaria, la mayor cantidad fueron implementadas por Brasil y Colombia;en lo referente al gasto social como porcentaje del producto interno bruto (PIB), la región estuvo por debajo del promedio en comparación con países de diferentes niveles de ingreso, a excepción de Brasil y Argentina, que contaban con el 31,8 % y 30 %, respectivamente. Cabe destacar, como conclusión, la problemática en la estructura fiscal que quedó en evidencia con la pandemia en los países en vías de desarrollo y la neutralidad de los mecanismos fiscales al no provocar efectos positivos frente a las desigualdades económicas.Alternate : This article consists of identifying the fiscal policies implemented in Latin America, their effects and the focus on the visualization of economic inequalities in the context of the pandemic caused by COVID-19. The methodology developed is the literature review of the years 2020 and 2021, in specialized research and thematic statistics databases Scopus and Redalyc. The countries with the highest results in terms of research carried out were taken as a sample: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico and Peru. The results indicate that although the tax structures in these countries are similar, the highest collection in recent years is in Brazil and Mexico, in terms of the measures taken in fiscal and monetary policy, the largest amount were taken by Brazil and Colombia, in spending as a percentage of GDP, the region is below average compared to countries with different income levels except Brazil and Argentina with 31,8 % and 30 % respectively. The conclusions highlight the problems in the tax structure that became evident with the pandemic in developing countries and the neutrality of the tax mechanisms as they do not have positive effects on economic inequalities.

A Fiscal Perspective on Policy Responses to COVID-19: Evidence from the Emerging Economy of India

The COVID-19 health crisis became a global economic crisis with mitigation measures leading to a steep decline in economic activity, disrupting demand and supply. To attenuate the economic impact of the pandemic, monetary and fiscal policies were used by governments, central banks and supranational institutions. This article analyzes the implications of fiscal and monetary policies used in India in response to the COVID-19 pandemic on the country's public debt. India's adoption of a unique calibrated expenditure strategy through fiscal stimulus provided a cushion to mounting expenditure requirements in a scenario of falling government revenue. Widening fiscal deficits due to the increased need for fiscal spending on the one hand, and a decline in revenue generation owing to fall in economic activities on the other, saw a surge in India's public debt. Coordinated efforts by monetary and fiscal authorities through conventional and non-conventional measures added new dimensions to India's debt management strategy. The unprecedented magnitude of the crisis pushed the Government of India to relax its debt and deficit indicators until the economy can move back to normalcy.

Factors Determing the COVID-19 Fiscal Stimulus Packages. the Case of the Advanced and Emerging Economies

The article discusses the determinants of fiscal policy in the times of COVID-19. Most economists share the opinion that fiscal packages are necessary to mitigate the health and economic costs of a pandemic. However, the scale of fiscal intervention and the types of fiscal policy instruments that should be used raise doubts. The aim of the article is to explore the factors determining the size and structure of fiscal packages which have been implemented globally in response to the crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition, attention is drawn to the potential impact of fiscal intervention on public finance sustainability, bearing in mind that most governments have chosen to use fiscal support instruments to enhance consumption and investment following the COVID-19 hit, although the cross-country differences are evident both in the magnitude and composition of fiscal stimulus packages. A descriptive analysis was conducted along with a panel data analysis to examine the determinants of government fiscal support in response to the COVID-19 crisis. The empirical analysis is based on cross-sectional data from the International Monetary Fund, OECD and Eurostat. The sample consists of 40 countries representing advanced and emerging economies. Based on the panel analysis, it was found that the total fiscal stimulus packages depended mainly on the fiscal space. Fiscal intervention in countries with greater tax-collection capacity (such as Germany, United States, United Kingdom and Japan) was greater compared to others. A positive and statistically significant relationship between the average income level and the size of fiscal stimulus was also confirmed. Moreover, it turned out that countries with larger populations and higher fatality rates provided greater fiscal support for the COVID-19 pandemic.The empirical analysis expands the existing knowledge on the determinants of the fiscal policy implemented in response to the COVID-19 crisis under the conditions of low interest rates, when macroeconomic stabilization can only be ensured through fiscal stimulus programs. © 2022 Anna Wildowicz-Szumarska, published by Sciendo.

THE ASYMMETRICAL IMPACT OF POLICY RESPONSES ON VOLATILITY OF SOVEREIGN DEFAULT SWAPS

The COVID-19 pandemic has adversely influenced economies around the world through supply and demand channels. The increasing uncertainty and the decreasing demand due to the strict social measures of the government to cushion the spread of the pandemic have transformed COVID-19 from a health crisis into an economic crisis. To moderate the negative economic atmosphere during this period, the governments have implemented expansionary fiscal policy. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impacts of the social and economic measures taken during COVID-19 on the volatility of sovereign credit default swaps for Turkey, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The empirical findings indicate that social distancing measures increase uncertainty, but health and economic policies moderate the negative impacts on the economy of Turkey, Spain, and the United Kingdom. The impact of the policies in question is greater in the high number of case regimes.

Economic stimulus measures in the pandemic: the role of fiscal decentralisation

Is fiscal federalism associated with economic policy responses and stimulus measures adopted by national and sub-national governments to mitigate the adverse economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic? In this paper, we provide empirical evidence that it indeed is. Our results indicate that even after controlling for various relevant factors, countries with fiscally federal (decentralised) governments have adopted larger fiscal and macro-financial policy packages (as a percent of GDP). However, there are no significant differences in monetary-policy responses between centralised and decentralised governments. We also show that these results are robust to using different federalism measures, including different sets of control variables and different econometric specifications that include an instrumental variable estimation.

Real-time Forecasts of State and Local Government Budgets with an Application to the COVID-19 Pandemic

Using a sample of the 48 contiguous US states, we consider the problem of forecasting state governments' revenues and expenditures in real time using models that feature mixed-frequency data. We find that mixed-data sampling (MIDAS) regressions that predict low-frequency fiscal outcomes using high-frequency macroeconomic and financial market data outperform traditional fiscal forecasting models in both a relative and an absolute sense. We also consider an application of forecasting fiscal outcomes in the face of the economic uncertainty induced by the coronavirus pandemic. Overall, we show that MIDAS regressions provide a simple tool for predicting fiscal outcomes in real time.

STRESS TESTING THE FISCAL FRAMEWORK

The part of the UK fiscal framework which determines how UK government funding is allocated across the four home nations has undergone profound change since 2012, given tax and social security devolution. The UK government's post-Brexit plans for regional development funding, state aid, regulation and trade negotiations have led to significant disagreements about the nature of the devolved fiscal and constitutional settlement. And the COVID-19 pandemic provided a major shock to a fiscal system with limited flexibility for the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish devolved governments. This paper reviews the changes and challenges faced during these reforms and policy shocks. We find that: tensions about reforms to funding arrangements reflect the inconsistency of principles guiding the reforms;that the UK government's post-Brexit plans do reduce the policy autonomy of the devolved governments, but reflect powers central governments often have in even highly decentralised countries;and that temporary changes to rules and the nature of the COVID-19 pandemic prevented a subnational fiscal crisis, but that more systematic change may make the system more robust to future shocks. This suggests that a review of the principles underpinning the UK's subnational fiscal and economic policies would be highly worthwhile.

A research agenda for regional and local government

I A Research Agenda for Regional and Local Government i by Mark Callanan and John Loughlin is a forward-looking edited collection which attempts to construct and justify exploratory scholarship on regional and local government (Callanan & Loughlin, [1]). This is clearly linked to the cohering theme of the financial crisis, as, The League, as an example by the authors, did not lead any regional government prior to the crisis, and now commands governance of four Italian regions. As such, this typology is pioneering and future scholarship on this area is welcomed, particularly amidst the COVID-19 crisis and its potential reconfiguration of decentralization and regional authority following the financial crisis. Explicitly focusing on the financial crisis, the authors comparatively analyse similarities and differences of the EU's impact on regional and local governance surrounding the crisis. [Extracted from the article]

A dívida pública, o câmbio e a dinâmica privada de alocação da riqueza financeira: limites e possibilidades da política fiscal

O artigo avalia como na economia brasileira durante os primeiros meses da pandemia da Covid-19 a dinâmica privada de alocação da riqueza financeira potencializou a instabilidade macroeconômica, condicionando as possibilidades e os limites das políticas fiscal e monetária, em particular via efeitos sobre o câmbio. São discutidas as razões da volatilidade financeira e seus impactos sobre o manejo da política econômica. Analisa-se o papel da especulação, enfatizando que – no contexto de juros baixos, que vigorou até 2020, e da proliferação de estratégias de investimento e de gestão de risco procíclicas por investidores locais, com destaque para os fundos multimercados – ela tem sido uma fonte de ampliação da instabilidade e da volatilidadedos preços. O texto discute ainda ideias para que a regulação incentive a diversidade de visões e de estratégias de investimento, combatendo as externalidades negativas da especulação.Alternate : The article assesses how macroeconomic instability was amplified in the Brazilian economy during the first months of the Covid-19 pandemic by the private dynamics of financial wealth allocation. It affects the possibilities and limits of fiscal and monetary policies, in particular via effects on the exchange rate. The general reasons for financial volatility and its impacts on the management of economic policy are also discussed. The role of speculation is analyzed. In the context of low interest rates, which prevailed until 2020, and the proliferation of procyclical investment and risk management strategies by local investors, especially hedge funds – it has been a source of increased instability and volatility in prices. The text also discusses ideas for regulation to encourage the diversity of views and investment strategies, mitigating the negative externalities of speculation.

Surviving Fiscal Odysseys in the Caribbean

In the aftermath of the globalfinancial crisis and in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the subsequent diminishing fiscal spaces of small islands, fiscalpolicy and the search forfiscal sustainability have regainedprominence on both policy and research agendas. Strengtheningfiscal rules andfiscal institutions have indeed emerged as a key response to the fiscal legacy of the crisis. This is more evident across small island economies in the Caribbean, especially the tourism-dependent island economies. While the recent surge in policy debates and discussion is certainly a sign of the mountingfiscalpressures, these are by no means new to the Caribbean. Over half-a-century ago fiscal matters were prominently on the Caribbean federation agenda. Nevertheless, fiscal sustainability remains ephemeral and illusionary;indeed, an odyssey in the Caribbean.

Bringing Back the Jobs Lost to Covid-19: The Role of Fiscal Policy

Covid-19 induced job losses occurred predominantly in industries with intensive worker–client interaction as well as in pink-collar and blue-collar occupations. We study the ability of fiscal policy to stabilize employment by occupation and industry during the Covid-19 crisis. We use a multisector, multioccupation macro-economic model and investigate different fiscal-policy instruments that help the economy recover faster. We show that fiscal stimuli foster job growth for hard-hit pink-collar workers, whereas stimulating blue-collar job creation is more challenging. Only a cut in labor income taxes generates a substantial number of blue-collar jobs. © 2022 The Authors. Journal of Money, Credit and Banking published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Ohio State University.

Economic and behavioral determinants of forced household savings during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This study seeks to identify the determinants of forced household savings in 16 European Union (EU) member states in 2020. We show that the higher the severity of the COVID-19 pandemic in the state, measured by the intensity of government restrictions or the number of COVID-19-related deaths, the higher the level of forced savings. Such savings also increased with gross domestic product per capita and the financial support provided for households and enterprises by the government. Additionally, savings cultures and personality traits that support compliance with pandemic-related restrictions and enhance coping with the hardship of the pandemic had a positive impact on forced savings. Our results show that while common pandemic shock may lead to discrepancies in forced savings in affected countries, their level depends largely on government response in the form of imposed restrictions as well as financial support for households and enterprises. Therefore, strong fiscal support during the pandemic can be likened to sowing the seeds for post-pandemic recovery, as savings accumulated during the pandemic shock may be used to finance the pent-up demand. This, in turn, suggests that fiscal responses during the pandemic may act as a significant driver of post-pandemic business cycle (de)synchronization and inflation differentials among EU member states and, more importantly, euro-area countries.

The COVID-19 pandemic and financial markets in Central Europe: Macroeconomic measures and international policy spillovers

This paper investigates the effects of macroeconomic policy announcements on financial markets in three Central European economies: Czechia, Hungary, and Poland (CE–3). We focus on the unprecedented stabilisation policies implemented from March to December 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, including unconventional monetary measures and large stimulus programs. Detailed categories of monetary and fiscal measures are introduced into vector autoregressions with exogenous regressors and dynamic conditional correlations, which we estimate using daily data. This allows us to control for policy spillovers from abroad, as well as global risk factors and pandemic-related variables. We find that, in general, macroeconomic policy measures implemented in the CE–3 countries played an important role in stabilising financial markets during the pandemic. We uncover several notable patterns in the reaction of markets to anti-crisis measures across the region. The impact of the monetary policy announcements on 10-year sovereign bond yields was more substantial than on stock market returns and exchange rate returns. The communication of the unconventional tools proved effective in lowering the bond yields. Interestingly, we document that the effects of non-standard measures for some variables, such as the exchange rate, can be qualitatively different from those resulting from a conventional monetary expansion. Even though the domestic monetary events became more important than the fiscal ones, the latter proved relevant for financial market returns, especially when large-scale immediate fiscal measures and tax deferrals were introduced. We also show that the CE–3 economies were subject to the cross-border transmission of policy announcement effects from the Euro Area and the US, although the magnitude of these effects was smaller than expected and varied across the CE–3 countries.