Fiscal council: European model or new global standard?

Abstract

The great recession of 2008 caused fiscal crises in several countries. This phenomenon highlighted the relevance of the problem of fiscal alcoholism and excessive sovereign debt. Nowadays rules-based fiscal policies have become more and more widespread to limit indebtedness. This article explores one of the most important elements of rules-based systems: the fiscal council. The key question imposed was: is it mostly a European phenomenon, or rather a global standard? As a method, we employed descriptive statistics, then a hierarchical cluster analysis, based on the data of the IMF Fiscal Council Dataset. In conclusion, two separated groups were formed: an EU and a non-EU cluster with some outliers, thus our working hypothesis was underpinned. Our results have thus contributed to the literature and advanced the case that in the last ten years the increased number of fiscal councils can be attributed to international (European) regulations or internal political issues rather than actual enhancements of fiscal prudence.