This paper looks into the contagion dynamics of sovereign credit rating changes with regards to bond yields in the period before and during the sovereign debt crisis in Europe. Our sample included European Union member countries, as well as a Eurozone subsample and a subsample excluding highly indebted countries. Events and outlooks from all three major rating agencies were considered. Our findings for the pre-crisis period are consistent with existing research, indicating an increase in borrowing costs by approximately five basis points in the case of a one-notch negative event, and insignificant effects in the case of positive events. During the crisis period, we observed a reversal of this effect, associating negative ratings with lower spreads on the entire sample. However, the effect was no longer significant when highly indebted countries were excluded from the sample, indicating that this effect may be tied to overly negative expectations. Lastly, we investigated the persistence of results, with only full-sample crisis period data displaying persistent effects. JEL Classification F01, F34, F42 Keywords credit rating, sovereign debt, default, debt crisis, European debt, sustainability Author's e-mail martin1703@gmail.com Supervisor's e-mail schneider.ondrej@gmail.com

Este trabalho analisa o processo de ordenamento fiscal que ocorreu no Brasil, na década de 1990, abordando especificamente o processo de criação da Lei de Responsabilidade Fiscal (LRF). Alguns autores na Ciência Política argumentam que os projetos de lei votados no Congresso que afetam os interesses dos governadores não passam porque os governadores mobilizam suas respectivas bancadas estaduais para vetá-los. Assim, como podemos entender a aprovação da Lei de Responsabilidade Fiscal, lei complementar que afeta diretamente os interesses financeiros e fiscais dos entes federativos. Alguns autores argumentam que houve um consenso em torno da necessidade do ordenamento fiscal, na década de 1990, destacando o processo de incrementalismo das mudanças institucionais, o desenvolvimento de uma \"cultura fiscalista\"que vira consenso na opinião pública e na classe política e, as crises financeiras internacionais (México, 1995; Ásia, 1997 e Rússia, 1998) que colocaram em xeque a capacidade de reação do governo diante das ameaças à política econômica de estabilização. Este trabalho alinha-se com os que desenvolvem esses argumentos, mas enfatiza o processo de negociação, ou seja, a existência de um dissenso dentro do consenso, que caracterizou o processo de criação da LRF. Argumentamos que, a despeito da existência de um consenso em torno da idéia de promover um ordenamento fiscal, a criação e a aprovação da LRF caracterizaram-se por conflitos dentro do governo e por um processo de intensa negociação parlamentar. / The aim of this work is to investigate the Brazilian process of fiscal ordering in the 1990s. More specifically, it focuses on the creation process of Fiscal Responsibility Law. Its point of departure is some political scientists vision that legislative projects undermining the subnational governments interests are not often approved due to State governors efforts to veto them. The hypothesis is that this phenomenon happens because governors exert stronger influence on the behavior of legislators than the President and political parties. For this reason, they assume that governors are veto-players in the Brazilian political system. This is an important component of our research strategy that seeks to explain why Fiscal Responsibility Law was approved despite of the key players financial and fiscal interests. The novelty of this work is to provide an approach that unveils a little explored explanatory element by previous works: the process of negotiation of the law project in the Federal Executive and in the Federal Legislative. In tune with some authors claims that there was a consensus on the necessity of fiscal ordering, we scrutinize the incremental process of institutional change and the development of a \"fiscal culture\" in the Brazilian society and its political class. We go on to suggest that international financial international crisis (México, 1995; Ásia, 1997 e Rússia, 1998) served as tests of the government\'s capacity to deal with the challenges posed to the economic stabilization policies. Furthermore, the current work gives special attention to addressing the process of negotiation that gave rise to the Fiscal Responsibility Law. We argue that the whole process was characterized by the existence of a dissension inside of consensus. Putting somewhat different, conflicts in the Federal Executive realm and complex negotiation schemes at the Federal Legislative level characterize the creation and the approbation stages of Fiscal Responsibility Law in Brazil.

Thesis advisor: Peter N. Ireland / This dissertation deals with the macroeconomic implications of fiscal policy in small open economies with a particular emphasis on emerging economies. I use both empirical and theoretical approaches to distinguish key difference in the design of fiscal policy between emerging and developed economies. I also analyze the macroeconomic consequences of differences in the conduct of fiscal policy. Thus, the dissertation is focused on the interplay between fiscal policy and business cycle dynamics. Recent policy challenges in developed economies, such as monetary authorities grappling with the zero lower bound on short run nominal rates and fiscal stimulus packages emerging as an important policy tool, have sparked renewed academic interest in the topic of fiscal policy and business cycles. Institutional and macroeconomic features in emerging economies make the macroeconomic aspects of fiscal policy an important research agenda and one to which this dissertation contributes. A number of papers have documented fiscal policy pro-cyclicality in terms of stronger co-movement between government expenditure and macroeconomic fundamentals in emerging and developing economies. This feature of the data raises 2 important questions: 1) does fiscal policy reinforce the macroeconomic cycle in these countries leading to heighten macroeconomic volatility ("when it rains, it pours"), and 2) is the fiscal stance in these economies due to unique macroeconomic features or is it the consequence of institutional and political imperfections? The first chapter, titled "When it rains, it pours": fiscal policy, credit constraints and business cycles in emerging and developed economies, sets out to answer these questions by comparatively studying a group of developed and emerging economies. I estimate a panel structural vector autoregressive model to investigate if government consumption expenditure responds more pro-cyclically to fundamentals and what role international financial conditions play for the fiscal stance and for the volatility of the cycle in emerging and developed economies. My findings suggest that the response to output fluctuations is not systematically different for emerging governments relative to their developed counterparts. However, emerging governments curtail spending in response to increases in the sovereign borrowing rate which forces their consumption expenditure to act more pro-cyclically. I find evidence of higher fiscal discretion in emerging economies. However, the efficacy of government consumption expenditure is substantially lower in emerging than in developed economies. Thus, fiscal policy ends up being responsible for a lower share of business cycle volatility in emerging than in developed economies. In the second chapter, titled Estimating the Dynamics of Fiscal Financing in Emerging Economies, I propose a strategy for estimating the government financing rule for an emerging economy. The estimation uses the structural VAR impulse responses obtained in the previous chapter to discipline the parameters of a small open economy real business cycle model with a public sector. The parameters can be split into two groups: those influencing the effectiveness of fiscal policy and the parameters governing the financing of the exogenous stream of government consumption. The empirical response to interest rate shocks puts restrictions on the first group of parameters governing the size of the multiplier. The empirical response to a government consumption shock can be used to obtain estimates of the fiscal policy rule. I construct a model with a role for both interest rate shocks and government consumption shocks. A natural estimation approach in this case is impulse response matching. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2018. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Economics.

O objetivo deste trabalho é investigar se os multiplicadores de gastos do governo diferem de acordo com o estado do ciclo de negócios para o período 1999: I- 2016: II. Para tanto é utilizado o Método de Projeção Local de Jordà para estimar as funções resposta ao impulso e os multiplicadores fiscais sob dois regimes diferentes: recessão e expansão. Para definir os diferentes regimes foram utilizadas as variáveis comumente usadas na literatura (o hiato do produto, o nível de utilização da capacidade instalada, a taxa de crescimento do PIB, a taxa de desemprego), além da datação oficial de ciclos do CODACE. A estimação do modelo não linear resulta em multiplicadores de gastos do governo, após um e dois anos, maiores nos períodos de recessão do que nos períodos de expansão, independentemente da variável escolhida para diferenciar os regimes. Porém, os multiplicadores obtidos não parecem ser diferentes estatisticamente entre os regimes. Infelizmente, como observado por Ramey e Zubairy (2017) a existência de séries históricas é fundamental para a estimação dos multiplicadores fiscais e sua ausência para a economia brasileira limita muito o que é possível dizer sobre o assunto / This paper aims to investigate whether government spending multipliers are different according to the state of the business cycle for the Brazilian economy during the period 1999:I-2016:II. In order to do so we use Jordà\'s Local Projection Method to estimate impulse response functions and fiscal multipliers under two different regimes: recession and expansion. To define the different regimes we use several variables commonly used in the literature: the output gap, the capacity utilization level, the GDP growth rate, the unemployment rate and CODACE. The nonlinear model estimations result in larger multipliers, after one and two years, in periods of economic recession than in periods of economic expansion, regardless of the variable chosen to differentiate regimes. However, the multipliers do not seem to be statistically different between regimes. Unfortunately, as observed by Ramey and Zubairy (2017), long historical series are fundamental for the adequate estimation of fiscal multipliers and their absence for the Brazilian economy does not allow anyone to say much about the subject.

Made available in DSpace on 2019-03-29T23:41:02Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2012-08-31 / Education Tax is a matter still raw, slightly stoned, whose axis of his citizenship matters. Taxes and public budgets are embedded within this theory the higher values that esteiam a just society: freedom, equality and solidarity. Conceptual and methodological consensus will slowly being made and other renegades. The Fiscal Theory of Education is under construction. Order an object that still haunts his steps roadmap is like pulling the green fruit and judge its sweet store for the future. Education Fiscal policy is the democratic state of law, uphold the values insculpidos the federal constitution of 88, mainly active citizenship, we might call participatory democracy, and human dignity. Fundamental pillars that guide, ideologically, the actions of the National Tax Education (PNEF), where the state exists to serve the individual, pursuing the highest aspirations of the welfare state, we could synthesize them as realization of full human development. Reaching this stage requires a cultural environment of human emancipation, and it is the challenge and the certainty of a long and stony way to go. However, we'll only reach it by traversing it. / Educação Fiscal é uma matéria, ainda bruta, pouco lapidada, que tem como eixo de sua matéria a cidadania. Os tributos e os orçamentos públicos dentro desta teoria estão embebidos pelos valores mais altos que esteiam uma sociedade justa : a liberdade, a igualdade e a solidariedade. Consensos conceituais e metodológicos vão sendo lentamente assumidos e outros renegados. A Teoria da Educação Fiscal encontra-se em construção. Condenar um objeto que ainda persegue etapas de seu itinerário traçado, é como arrancar o fruto verde e julgar de seu doce guardado para o futuro. A Educação Fiscal é política pública do Estado democrático de direito, a defender os valores insculpidos na Constituição federal de 88, principalmente a cidadania ativa, que poderíamos chamar de democracia participativa, e a dignidade da pessoa humana. Pilastras principiológicas que norteiam, ideologicamente, as ações do Programa Nacional de Educação Fiscal ( PNEF), onde o Estado existe para servir ao indivíduo , perseguindo os anseios maiores do Estado social, que poderíamos sintetizá-los como realização do pleno desenvolvimento do ser humano. Chegar até este estágio pressupõe um ambiente cultural de emancipação humana, e é o desafio e a certeza de um longo e pedregoso caminho a percorrer. Entretanto, só o alcançaremos percorrendo-o.

This dissertation examines the Argentine state's efforts to stabilize notions of value and reconstitute citizens as taxpayers and users of national currency after the financial crisis of 2001. Working with material from sixteen months of ethnographic research with federal and provincial tax authorities, neo-liberal and heterodox economists, and members of the Buenos Aires upper classes, I trace charged public debates surrounding tax payment and off-shore banking, examining both the rationalities and affective geographies guiding upper class decisions to invest in, or divest from, the nation. My dissertation foregrounds fiscal and financial relations between states and citizens as a critical nexus in the formation of state sovereignty, civic obligation, and liberal individualism. I propose that insight into the volatility of Argentine public finance requires attention to the analytical frameworks deployed by elites, including technical experts and professionals more broadly, to understand and prevent inflation, a defining question in Argentina since at least the early 1950s. The currency board was an anti-inflationary policy that, by pegging the peso to the dollar, luring foreign capital, and drastically reducing the much-vilified public sector, promised to offer "juridical security," (seguridad juridica) protecting private property rights from the vagaries of monetary instability. Its collapse, after a decade-long tenure, led Argentine authorities to declare the largest debt default in history. The dissertation examines a series of paradoxes faced by many Western nation-states that are acutely manifest in Argentina. How is the indebtedness implicit in the payment of tax, a debt that is not subject to cancellation or the reciprocal laws of market exchange, reconciled with the form of personhood C.B. Macpherson called "possessive individualism" (1962) whose lineage originated in the Lockean rights-bearing citizen? How is this paradox negotiated in light of what many scholars have noted is a reversal characteristic of modernity where the individual rather than the state is seen as the primary sovereign? How is an elusive trust in authority, upon which national currency depends, reconciled with the widely disseminated perception of economy as a set of rational processes? The dissertation argues that monetary stability hinges, in part, on the state's successful management of these paradoxes. Through multi-sited ethnography, I offer insight into discourses that condition perceptions of the proper directionality of debt between state and citizens, often expressed in views of tax as theft or gift, which critically inform the willingness of elites to store wealth in Argentine currency. Examining the new discursive links forged between accounting and accountability, I trace President Nestor Kirchner's re-signification of the debt default from a source of shame and humiliation to a triumphant gesture of sovereign refusal. I argue that this fiery anti-imperialist discourse, which garnered massive popular support and managed to reconstitute an image of the state as protector rather than thief, was critical to imposing an unprecedented `haircut' on foreign creditors in debt default negotiations. In cafés and households, I document conversations with elites angered by the widespread backlash against neo-liberalism, exasperated by the return of "populism," and persuaded that neo-liberal policies failed only because of a corrupt "political class" (clase politica). Firmly identified with a view of themselves as the primary sovereigns, and believing monetary policy should pivot around individual choice, they feel the country is unworthy of their wealth. Several ethnographic chapters document contentious encounters between tax authorities and elite subjects in seaside resort towns and gated communities, analyzing the strategies mobilized by tax administrations to re-initiate what I call the `fiscal politics of recognition.' The dissertation offers an ethnographic portrait of how elite Argentines grapple with a deep and unresolved tension between the methodological individualism shared by neo-classical economic science and Anglo-American citizenship theory, and the relational and recursive nature of monetary value, which exceeds, and cannot be encompassed by, the languages of market exchange and the social contract. The first chapter is a genealogy of the birth of public finance in relation to theories of liberal individualism in Great Britain, documenting the process through which affectively entangled creditor-debtor relations between state and subjects, while constitutive of civic obligation, nation-building, and trust in modern state economies, were "purified," (Latour 1993) subjected to disciplinary amnesia. A historical chapter considers how the rarefied sciences of economy traveled to South Atlantic shores to be incorporated into a very distinct historical and geo-political assemblage, one where the fiscal and financial entanglements, disavowed but nonetheless exerting a spectral presence in Western European countries, were absent. The sequence and trajectory of state building in Argentina lead to an accentuated version of the paradox discussed above, making it especially difficult to perceive money, not only as a medium of exchange, but as a pathway of recognition, constitutive of economic obligation. Despite a resurgence of interest in the question of sovereignty in critical theory, scholarship on taxation -- by all accounts a defining feature of sovereignty -- is surprisingly limited, often treated as an afterthought in work on economic anthropology and globalization. Building on work in political and economic anthropology on market and fiscal subjectivities, this research focuses on citizens in their capacities as debtors and creditors of the state, providing insight into a fragile fiscal bond that, despite its centrality, has received little attention in anthropologies of modern capitalism. Offering new analytic tools and re-valorizing older ones, this dissertation elucidates the relationships among value, national belonging, and economic insecurity, made newly visible in the wake of financial crisis.

Concerns about the state of public finances in the main advanced economies have increased as a result of the global financial and economic crisis that started in late 2007 - 2008. The fiscal solvency of several euro area peripheral countries has been put under the spotlight of the market participants who started to believe that a sovereign default was likely to happen in an advanced economy member of the euro area. This thesis seeks to investigate the sovereign risk in the euro area countries during the period before, during and after the crisis by focusing on the sovereign bond and credit default swaps spreads and the factors that drive them. In Chapters 2, we investigate the determinants of the government bond yields and sovereign credit default swaps. In our analysis for the government bond yields we find that the macroeconomic fundamentals used in our analysis are highly significant for the periphery countries, while they are less or not significant at all for the core euro area countries. We also find evidence that during the crisis the fluctuations of the government bond yields are not only explained by the macroeconomic fundamentals but also explained by factors related to the uncertainty in the euro area. In Chapter 3, we employ the panel cointegration approach in order to investigate the macroeconomic and financial indicators that impacted the sovereign credit default swaps in the crisis period using data from October 2008 until December 2014. We provide fresh evidence that the financial indicators, proxied by the iTraxx index as well as liquidity indicators, proxied by the bid-ask had a dominant role in explaining the CDS in almost all countries. In Chapter 4, in regard to the study of the price discovery relationship between the government bond yields and sovereign CDS, we suggest the use of cointegration methodology and also test for a structural break using the Gregory and Hanson approach to investigate the linkages between the two instruments. The structural break test suggests that the relation changed during the crisis and that the price discovery took place in the CDS market. Finally, in Chapter 5, we investigate the main factors causing the sovereign defaults. We use a panel of 99 countries to assess the impact that various macroeconomic and political risk indicators have on sovereign defaults on foreign currency bank loans, foreign currency bonds and local currency debt, utilizing an extended database constructed by the Bank of Canada. Our results suggest that the favorable economic indicators, lower debt levels, and higher political stability all reduce the likelihood of default. We also find that the capital outflows restrictions are positively associated with higher probability of default.

Muitas discussões têm sido feitas em torno da questão tributária no Brasil e no mundo, particularmente na Comunidade Econômica Européia, resultante da consolidação e aperfeiçoamento do Mercado Comum Europeu. Neste quatro destaca-se os aspectos relacionados com a tributação sobre o valor adicionado,particularmente aqueles concernentes ao momento da incidência, na origem (produção) ou no destino (consumo) e a dificuldade da sua operacionalização, no caso de um estado federal (país), pelas entidade subnacionais (estados membros). A tributação sobre o valor adicionado de nível estadual no Brasil, neste contexto, evoluiu para a adoção de alíquotas diferenciadas para um mesmo produto, conforme as operações sejam internas ou interestaduais e neste segundo caso, conforme a região de localização dos estados de origem e destino das operações, embora os desequilíbrios no espaço nacional, a nível de ICMS, com a importação do imposto sobre valor adicionado da competência estadual, pelos estados mais pobres persistam e esteja cada vez mais latente a guerra fiscal entre os estados federados, representada pela disputa cada vez mais acirrada, da opção de localização das novas plantas industriais a serem instaladas no país. Os sistemas de informações das entidades políticas envolvidas diretamente (os estados membros) e do Ministério da Fazenda, que acumula e processa os dados relacionados ao tributo, de forma agregada, têm evoluído bastante, utilizando intensamente a tecnologia de processamento de dados, desde o disquete de microcomputador até o teleprocessamento no controle das operações em trânsito. As novas tecnologias de informação vêm sendo progressivamente introduzidas pela maioria dos estados membros, havendo a utilização de tecnologias como EDI - Eletronic Data Interchange, teleprocessamento e agora a Internet começa a ser considerada. Discute-se neste trabalho, as peculiaridades do nosso imposto sobre valor adicionado estadual, o ICMS, quanto ao seu perfil bem como questões relacionadas à sua administração pelos Governos a quem cabe o produto da sua cobrança, ou seja, o Controle Fiscal. Assim, o Controle Fiscal, com a utilização das novas tecnologias, deverá ser cada vez mais um instrumento efetivo da Administração Pública. / Many discussions have been made around of tax problem in Brazil and in the world, particularly in European Economic Community, resultant of the consolidation and improvement of European Common Market. In this context is elevated the aspects related on the value added, particularly those concerning to moment of incidence, on origin (production) or on destiny (consumption) and the difficulty of its application, in case of a federal state (country), by subnational entities (membership states). The taxation on the value added on state level in Brazil, in this context, led to adoption of different rates for the same product, according to the operations being internal or interstate and in this second case, according to the region of localization of the states of origin and destiny of operations, although the disequilibrium in this national space, by level at ICMS, with the import of the duty on value added of state competence, by the poorer states persist and it is each time more latent the fiscal war between federate states, represented by a harder dispute, for the option of localization of the new industrial plants to be installed in the country. The information systems of the political entities directly linked (the membership states) and Finance Minister that accumulates and processes the data related to tax, of joined form, had evolved too, using intensively the data processing technology, from the floppy disk of microcomputer to teleprocessing on the movement operation control. The new information technologies have been progressively introduced for the most membership states, there has been use technologies such EDI-Electronic Data Interchange, teleprocessing and now Internet begins to be considered. It is discussed in this work, the peculiarity of our state value added tax, the ICMS, in its profile as well related questions at its administration by the governments who pertains to the result of its collect, as a matter of facts it is, the Fiscal Control. Then, the Fiscal Control, with the use of new technologies, must be each time more an effective instrument of the Public Administration.

Submitted by Rosivalda Pereira (mrs.pereira@ufma.br) on 2017-05-24T19:12:30Z No. of bitstreams: 1 EdenCarmoSoares.pdf: 3133937 bytes, checksum: fbb5a4ec09882754fb527d148124f36c (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-05-24T19:12:30Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 EdenCarmoSoares.pdf: 3133937 bytes, checksum: fbb5a4ec09882754fb527d148124f36c (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-06-30 / The Fiscal Liability Law (FLL) brought a set of measures intended to ensure a more responsible fiscal management in the country with an emphasis on achieving local revenues by subnational units. The study brings an economic data panel of the Maranhão State and its municipalities and demonstrates how it impacts on local public finances. For the theorical foundation, the formation of the Brazilian tax system is investigated as well as aspects related to the theory to taxes. The study also addresses the fical federalism, the distribution of tax sources by federal entities, and the verification of the units responsible for the public policies management. It presents the Brazilian economic scenario that gave rise to the implementation of the Real Plan in the 1990s and the reforms associated with it that resulted in the creation of the FLL. It stands out as a general objective of the research the examination of how Maranhão municipalities have adapted to the new standards of accountability brought by the FLL in fiscal management, and espcially if they have managed to raise their exclusive revenues. We used to instruments to achieve this goal: the Fiscal Management Firjan Index (FMFI) and the Tax Revenues Achievement Indicator (TRAI). In issues such as public investment, the state's municipalities are well placed when compared to others of the Federation. However, the evaluated city halls are at a lower level than the national average regarding the generation of the own revenue. Nevertheless, Maranhão municipalities managed to raise their private income after the introduction of the FLL, although this increase is concentrated in cities that received extraordinary invesments in particular sectors of the economy like Santo Antonio dos Lopes and Bacabeira. / A Lei de Responsabilidade Fiscal (LRF) trouxe um conjunto de medidas que teve como intuito garantir uma gestão fiscal mais responsável no país, com ênfase na obtenção de receitas locais pelas unidades subnacionais. O estudo traz um painel de dados econômicos do Estado do Maranhão e de seus municípios e demonstra como ele impacta nas finanças públicas locais. Para a fundamentação teórica, é investigada a formação do Sistema Tributário Brasileiro, bem como, os aspectos relacionados à teoria dos tributos. Também são abordados o federalismo fiscal, a repartição das fontes tributárias pelos entes federativos e a verificação das unidades responsáveis pela gestão das políticas públicas. Apresenta-se o cenário que permeou a economia brasileira nos anos 1990, que deu ensejo à implantação do Plano Real e as reformas associadas a ele, e que redundaram na LRF. Destaca-se como objetivo geral da pesquisa examinar como os municípios maranhenses adaptaram-se aos novos padrões de responsabilidade na gestão fiscal trazidos pela LRF, e, especialmente, se esses conseguiram elevar suas receitas próprias. Para o alcance desse objetivo foram utilizados dois instrumentos: o Índice Firjan de Gestão Fiscal (IFGF) e o Indicador de Realização de Receita Tributária (IRRT). Constata-se que, em quesitos como investimentos públicos, os municípios do Estado estão bem situados, quando comparados aos demais da federação, mas em relação à geração de receitas próprias, as prefeituras avaliadas encontram-se em um patamar inferior à média nacional. Contudo, os municípios maranhenses conseguiram elevar suas receitas próprias após a instituição da LRF, não obstante esse incremento está concentrado em cidades que receberam aportes extraordinários de investimentos em setores específicos da economia, como exemplo, Santo Antônio dos Lopes e Bacabeira.

The economic downturn of 2008-2010 has encouraged many economists andpoliticians to reconsider the role of fiscal policy. Whereas there is a broadly acceptedmodel which describes the influence of monetary policy on the economy, there is noconsensus concerning the fiscal policy.This paper aims to study the effectiveness of fiscal policy actions in Sweden over thepast 15 years, starting from the end of the banking crisis of 1992-93 to date. It has aspecific focus on the measures which were introduced in 2007-2010 and employs bothqualitative and quantitative analyses.The qualitative analysis investigates different expansionary fiscal measures, inter alia,the earned income tax credit, the new legislation for crisis management of banks, theguarantee program and the establishment of stability fund.The quantitative analysis is based on a 4-variable Vector Autoregression model whichhelps to identify the influence of general government expenditure, revenue and centralgovernment debt on GDP fluctuations over the past 15 years. The results demonstrate apositive response of GDP to an increase in government expenditure, with the maximumvalue of response achieved after 8 quarters. GDP also grows in response to a positiveshock in the central government debt, which is in line with the macroeconomic theory ofexpansionary fiscal policy. The positive response to an increase of revenue is somewhatcontradictory, and can become a topic for a further in-depth research.The economic downturn of 2008-2010 has encouraged many economists andpoliticians to reconsider the role of fiscal policy. Whereas there is a broadly acceptedmodel which describes the influence of monetary policy on the economy, there is noconsensus concerning the fiscal policy.This paper aims to study the effectiveness of fiscal policy actions in Sweden over thepast 15 years, starting from the end of the banking crisis of 1992-93 to date. It has aspecific focus on the measures which were introduced in 2007-2010 and employs bothqualitative and quantitative analyses.The qualitative analysis investigates different expansionary fiscal measures, inter alia,the earned income tax credit, the new legislation for crisis management of banks, theguarantee program and the establishment of stability fund.The quantitative analysis is based on a 4-variable Vector Autoregression model whichhelps to identify the influence of general government expenditure, revenue and centralgovernment debt on GDP fluctuations over the past 15 years. The results demonstrate apositive response of GDP to an increase in government expenditure, with the maximumvalue of response achieved after 8 quarters. GDP also grows in response to a positiveshock in the central government debt, which is in line with the macroeconomic theory ofexpansionary fiscal policy. The positive response to an increase of revenue is somewhatcontradictory, and can become a topic for a further in-depth research.