Fiscal Policy in Transition Economies: A Postscript

In this and several preceding issues of Post-Soviet Geography and Economics, we have published analyses of fiscal policy in Hungary (Kiss and Szapary, 2000), the Czech Republic (Drabek and Schneider, 2000), and Poland (Kemme and Rapacki, 2000). These analyses are based on papers presented at the Annual Meetings of the Association for Comparative Economic Studies in January 2000 and subsequently revised and updated for publication here. Such a systematic comparison of fiscal policy in these three transition economies is both timely and important for our understanding of the process of post-transition stabilization and of the longer-term disinflation that has been taking place in these economies during the 1990s. These processes will also have to continue if these three countries are to realize their goal of membership in the EU in the next five years. These surveys of fiscal policy reform also are motivated by the fact that, while a very large body of research has appeared on the monetary policy of the transition economies (see Davis and Patterson, 2001), much less attention has been paid to fiscal policy. This emphasis on monetary policy is perhaps mis-placed because, although monetary policy is important for both stabilization and exchange-rate policy, given the embryonic state of financial markets in these countries in the early tran-sition period, close coordination between fiscal and monetary policy was critical if money markets were not to be swamped by the central banks? need to finance government deficits. Moreover, just as the possibilities for an effective monetary policy depended on the creation of institutions that could support and mediate such policy, so did the introduction of an effective fiscal policy depend on the elimination of the socialist-era tax system, with its emphasis on the turnover and enterprise taxes, and on the creation of a modern system of taxation and of the agencies required to administer it. Indeed, Kiss and Szapary (2000, p. 233) are not off the mark when they argue that fiscal policy became the epicenter of the transformation process. In this paper, I will briefly summarize the lessons that these three valuable papers provide. I shall also attempt to draw some broader conclusions regarding the role of fiscal policy in the course of transition by comparing the experiences of the three countries.