An international empirical study on the fiscal surplus from the perspective of sectoral balances

Abstract

The simultaneous recording of public surplus with current account deficit in a national economy could be related to strong private leverage that usually ends in financial crisis, what would make the public surplus unsustainable. The objective of this work is to check the extent to which this claim is bolstered by empirical support. The results reveal that, in effect, the concurrence of public surpluses and current account deficits is associated with private leverage processes and financial crises. These outcomes question the design of the current fiscal rules since they don’t pay attention to the current account balance.