Yes / We examine the possible interactions of the financial cycle and fiscal position for G7 economies. We employ the innovative aggregate financial and fiscal stress indexes which are able to depict the perplexed nature of modern economies. A SVAR model is developed to investigate the effects of both financial and fiscal stress on key macroeconomic variables. The results, using two different identification methods, reveal that financial and fiscal shocks affect negatively the key macroeconomic variables. Additionally, there is a weak feedback effect from a financial shock to fiscal sector and vice versa.

Yes / In this paper, we focus on the financial and fiscal stress transmission for the G5 economies. Using financial and fiscal stress indexes, we assess the spillovers within each economy, as well as the cross-sectional effects. Two supplementary methodologies, measuring the degree of interconnectedness, are employed. Our findings indicate that the interactions between these two kinds of distress are intensive, especially during and after the Global Financial Crisis outbreak. The above reiterates the necessity for coordinated macroprudential policies, as a means to confine the adverse effects of excessive financial and fiscal stress.

State government finance is a substantial endeavor in the United States. The management of a multitude of revenues and expenditures often involves some level of fiscal stress. In an age of increased public scrutiny, policymakers must be mindful of possible causes of fiscal stress, and the policy options available to mitigate fiscal stress and increase financial stability. This dissertation contains three essays that examine different elements of fiscal stress, and in some cases, the applicable policy responses. Chapter two examines rainy day funds and their countercyclical goal of reducing recessionary fiscal stress. This essay takes a different approach from much of the literature, by using forecast residuals to quantify fiscal stress as tax revenue volatility and searching for any relationship between rainy day funds and states that had greater volatility. Empirical results indicate states that experience positive residuals, that is actual tax revenues greater than the forecast trend line, had greater rainy day fund balances. Chapter three focuses on the problem of lost revenues facing states from e-commerce. Due to Supreme Court decisions, businesses that do not have a physical location, or nexus, in a state are not required to collect sales and use taxes. To date, the policy response to lost revenue that has gained the most traction is the Streamlined Sales and Use Tax Agreement. Results indicate that states with local option sales taxes and higher sales tax rates were more likely to adopt this agreement. Chapter four scrutinizes state unemployment trust funds, which are used to fund state unemployment insurance programs. If state funds run short of money during recessions due to the larger number of individuals drawing benefits, then states must borrow from the federal government’s unemployment trust fund. This creates another liability that must be managed by state governments. Empirical findings show that several features of programs affect balances and the probability of taking a loan from the federal fund including the taxable wage base, weekly benefits, and unemployment tax rates. This dissertation concludes by summarizing the results and exploring future research possibilities on the three essay topics.

This work explores the relationship between municipal government debt and revenue diversification using a prism of institutional and fiscal interactions, concentrating on revenue fungibility effects over time and on the role of state-imposed constraints. A diversified revenue structure tends to stabilize revenue levels by balancing income-elastic and inelastic revenue sources. The impact of such diversity has been the subject of much research on expenditure and service levels among state and local governments. Considerably less research has been conducted on its potential relationship with debt, although capital financing is a necessary and often-utilized mechanism for funding capital and operational spending for local governments. Since it is well known that debt payments are fixed in the short run, they require sufficient revenue adequacy through economic highs and lows. It is thus argued that local governments with more diversified revenue structures are better able to utilize debt financing since revenue diversity mitigates the risk of borrowing by providing for greater fiscal predictability in the long run. This hypothesis is tested on two samples - a large sample of cities in Massachusetts from 2000 through 2009, as well as a cross-state sample, encompassing the cities from the majority of U.S. states. The findings of both studies provide preliminary evidence on the influence of revenue diversification on the levels of municipal indebtedness. While the Massachusetts study reveals that revenue diversification is, indeed, a statistically significant determinant of debt per capita, which also has an indirect effect on property tax burdens, the cross-state study suggests that revenue diversification has a mitigating impact on certain state-imposed fiscal rules, further adding to its weight as a strategic financial management tool. Both studies also reiterate the importance of such fiscal capacity factors as fund balances, intergovernmental revenue, and the size of government, while also revealing some new interaction patterns among various state-imposed debt limitations.

Fiscal stress is an important and recurring problem that states face. Research to date on state fiscal stress involves, predominantly, cross-sectional and case study analyses and does not address the effectiveness of state responses. Many of these studies use different definitions and measures of fiscal stress compounding the difficulty of comparing fiscal stress findings. The present research effort adds to the fiscal stress literature by (1) clarifying the meaning of fiscal stress in the state context, (2) developing a measure of fiscal stress that operationalizes this meaning and is comparable across units, and 3) using this measure analyzes patterns in and the effectiveness of state responses. Fiscal stress is measured using four indexes: budget, cash, long-run, service-level. Eleven financial indicators, calculated using data from state Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports (CAFRs), are used to create these indexes for all fifty states for the years 2002-2009. Descriptive analysis compares state fiscal stress levels (grouped into low, moderate, and high fiscal stress by cluster analysis) to state economic growth rates, state responses, and institutional factors yielding several findings. First, states do not use an incremental or punctuated equilibrium strategy in responding to fiscal stress; nor do their responses follow the pattern predicted by Cutback Management theory. Second, institutional factors affect both the levels of fiscal stress and state responses to fiscal stress. Regression analysis supports and extends these findings. First, short-term responses of expenditure cuts, tax increases, and rainy day fund use do not affect state fiscal stress levels. Second, these responses have long-term effects on fiscal stress levels. A major implication of this research is that there is very little states can do in the short-term to reduce fiscal stress. However, by balancing expenditures and revenues states can set themselves up to weather the next economic downturn with lower levels of fiscal stress.

Fiscal stress is an important and recurring problem that states face. Research to date on state fiscal stress involves, predominantly, cross-sectional and case study analyses and does not address the effectiveness of state responses. Many of these studies use different definitions and measures of fiscal stress compounding the difficulty of comparing fiscal stress findings. The present research effort adds to the fiscal stress literature by (1) clarifying the meaning of fiscal stress in the state context, (2) developing a measure of fiscal stress that operationalizes this meaning and is comparable across units, and 3) using this measure analyzes patterns in and the effectiveness of state responses. Fiscal stress is measured using four indexes: budget, cash, long-run, service-level. Eleven financial indicators, calculated using data from state Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports (CAFRs), are used to create these indexes for all fifty states for the years 2002-2009. Descriptive analysis compares state fiscal stress levels (grouped into low, moderate, and high fiscal stress by cluster analysis) to state economic growth rates, state responses, and institutional factors yielding several findings. First, states do not use an incremental or punctuated equilibrium strategy in responding to fiscal stress; nor do their responses follow the pattern predicted by Cutback Management theory. Second, institutional factors affect both the levels of fiscal stress and state responses to fiscal stress. Regression analysis supports and extends these findings. First, short-term responses of expenditure cuts, tax increases, and rainy day fund use do not affect state fiscal stress levels. Second, these responses have long-term effects on fiscal stress levels. A major implication of this research is that there is very little states can do in the short-term to reduce fiscal stress. However, by balancing expenditures and revenues states can set themselves up to weather the next economic downturn with lower levels of fiscal stress.

Fiscal stress is an important and recurring problem that states face. Research to date on state fiscal stress involves, predominantly, cross-sectional and case study analyses and does not address the effectiveness of state responses. Many of these studies use different definitions and measures of fiscal stress compounding the difficulty of comparing fiscal stress findings. The present research effort adds to the fiscal stress literature by (1) clarifying the meaning of fiscal stress in the state context, (2) developing a measure of fiscal stress that operationalizes this meaning and is comparable across units, and 3) using this measure analyzes patterns in and the effectiveness of state responses. Fiscal stress is measured using four indexes: budget, cash, long-run, service-level. Eleven financial indicators, calculated using data from state Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports (CAFRs), are used to create these indexes for all fifty states for the years 2002-2009. Descriptive analysis compares state fiscal stress levels (grouped into low, moderate, and high fiscal stress by cluster analysis) to state economic growth rates, state responses, and institutional factors yielding several findings. First, states do not use an incremental or punctuated equilibrium strategy in responding to fiscal stress; nor do their responses follow the pattern predicted by Cutback Management theory. Second, institutional factors affect both the levels of fiscal stress and state responses to fiscal stress. Regression analysis supports and extends these findings. First, short-term responses of expenditure cuts, tax increases, and rainy day fund use do not affect state fiscal stress levels. Second, these responses have long-term effects on fiscal stress levels. A major implication of this research is that there is very little states can do in the short-term to reduce fiscal stress. However, by balancing expenditures and revenues states can set themselves up to weather the next economic downturn with lower levels of fiscal stress.

This dissertation analyzes how local governments adapt to the fiscal stress of major disasters. Unifying theories of fiscal stress with emergency management theories, the dissertation presents a model of what influences local governments coping strategy use following disasters. Using new survey data and secondary financial data on cities, counties, and school districts that experienced Hurricane Harvey, findings show that local governments adapt in a variety of ways; of 137 local governments that responded, 66 percent used some number of coping strategies, with only 5 of 62 possible strategies not being used by any local governments. For those which did adapt, they on average used 7.06 strategies, and tended to show a preference towards revenue increasing strategies and rebuilding the community through new capital projects, with less emphasis on expenditure cuts compared to some prior literature findings on fiscal stress. The results indicate that local governments step up and provide new services necessary during the recovery process, to serve their community, despite fiscal stress. A negative binomial model shows partial support for the hypotheses that local governments with lower prior fiscal condition and greater hazard exposure will use more coping strategies. The findings show mixed results on whether institutional rules that restrict financial structures lead school districts to use more coping strategies than cities during the recovery process.

The length and depth of the Great Recession of 2008 provides an opportunity to examine the policy behavior of local governments unlike any window since the 1930's post Depression era. Utilizing Peterson's (1981) City Limits typology as a framework for local government policy allows for an evaluation of whether or not the economic downturn caused local governments to change their relative expenditures between policy categories. The City Limits typology has been widely used in the literature to explain how expenditures define a local government's role in economic development. The typology has had limited use in a pre-post natural experimental research design to determine if a local government has 'shifted' policy priorities as measured by changes in expenditures among and between policy categories. This research design and the use Peterson's framework combine for a study that has not yet been conducted under similar conditions. Most of the existing literature, including the research from the 1980's, failed to account for inter-state differences that directly affect local government expenditures and policy. Concentrating solely on Florida local governments, this study eliminates the confounding nature of a national study and ensures that the unit of analysis is comparable for research purposes. The study utilizes actual expenditure data for all cities and counties in Florida from FY2006 through FY2011. The research tests for the relationships between changes in policy priorities from pre- to post-recession, and the type of government, form of government, and various socio-economic factors. The research contributes to a new body of knowledge that is just beginning to emerge in the literature about how local governments respond to periods of extreme fiscal stress. The findings suggest that cities and counties had an inverse response from pre- to post-recession with cities shifting toward developmental expenditures and counties prioritizing allocational spending. Differences were also found between forms of government. In addition, the density of population was found to contribute differently to shifts in expenditures for cities and counties. The study identifies emerging patterns that can help local governments understand past behavior and better anticipate future economic downturns.

L'objet de cette thèse est d'étudier les liens qui existent entre les déséquilibres macroéconomiques et les crises, et de voir dans quelles mesures leur prise en compte peut aider une meilleure gestion des crises dans les pays de la zone euro. Les différents chapitres de cette thèse tentent d'apporter des réponses à trois questions importantes : Quels sont les indicateurs macro-financiers qui pourraient aider à mieux anticiper les épisodes de stress budgétaire dans les pays de la zone euro ? Quelles seraient les conséquences de la mise en place d'un système de garantie des dépôts bancaires sur les variables macroéconomiques et sur le comportement des investisseurs, investisseurs qui tiendraient compte du risque de défaut souverain ? Dans quelle mesure une meilleure qualité des institutions, de la gouvernance pourrait-elle aider à améliorer la croissance de long terme d'une économie contrainte sur le marché international des capitaux ? En retenant une approche de court terme, les deux premiers chapitres montrent l'importance de la confiance des marchés dans l'analyse du lien entre déséquilibres macroéconomiques et crises. Dans le troisième chapitre, nous adoptons une perspective de plus long terme pour analyser les effets de cette confiance des marchés sur la dynamique de la croissance. Notre approche est à la fois théorique et empirique. L'approche théorique se base sur les modèles DSGE (modèles d'équilibre général stochastiques dynamiques et la modélisation d'une crise dans une petite économie ouverte. L'approche empirique se focalise sur les modèles Probit/Logit sur données de panel et sur un modèle d'alerte fondé sur des signaux avancés (early warning indicators). / This dissertation consists of three essays on how macro-financial imbalances precede crises and to what extent their consideration can help better management of crises in the Eurozone countries. The different chapters of this thesis, try to answer three important questions : What are the macro-financial imbalances that exposed the Euro area countries to fiscal stress before the outbreak of the debt crises in Europe? What are the impacts of sovereign default and deposit guarantee on macroeconomic variables and on the behavior of investors ? To what extent could better institutions/governance help to improve the long-term growth in a constrained economy on the international capital market ? Using a short-term approach, the first two chapters show the importance of market confidence in analysis of the link between macroeconomic imbalances and crises. In the third chapter, we adopt a long-term perspective to analyze the effects of this market confidence on the dynamics of growth. Our approach is both theoretical and empirical. The theoretical approach is based on the DSGE models (dynamic stochastic general equilibrium models) and the modeling of a crisis in a small open economy (SOE). The empirical approach focuses on Probit/Logit models for panel data and on Signal model based on early warning indicators.