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Article
Publication date: 8 August 2016

Dionisis Chionis, Ioannis Pragidis and Panagiotis Schizas

The purpose of this paper is to uncover the determinants of the ten-year Greek bond yield in both pre- and post-crisis period that caused the unprecedented event, a country member…

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Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to uncover the determinants of the ten-year Greek bond yield in both pre- and post-crisis period that caused the unprecedented event, a country member of the Euro area, not to be able to tap the market. In doing so, following the recent literature, the authors employ two major set of variables, market driven and macroeconomic variables and the authors find two classes of results. Among others, debt to GDP ratio, deficit, inflation and unemployment, play a more significant role as determinants of the ten-years Greek bond yield during the crisis and second, the ten-years yield exceeds that fundamentals that price in. Moreover, the authors explicitly test for the impact of speculation on the yield. These results are in line with other empirical studies and shed line to the dramatic evolution of the bond yields in terms of fiscal consolidation era as it is in Greece. Since the Greek debt crisis is ongoing more than five years, policy makers should make substantial changes in their macro projections taking under consideration more the variables of inflation and unemployment, and release a viable concrete plan of debt relief, which among other, secures the success of the macro projections.

Design/methodology/approach

Empirical study on Greek debt crisis applying both macroeconomics and market indicators in separated estimations.

Findings

Debt to GDP ratio, deficit, inflation and unemployment among others, play a more significant role as determinants of the ten-years Greek bond yield during the crisis than had before and second, during the crisis ten-years yield is above the price that fundamentals would imply.

Originality/value

To the best of the authors’ knowledge it is the first time that the authors study the Greek debt crisis applying fundamental and market factors.

Details

Journal of Economic Studies, vol. 43 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0144-3585

Keywords

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Article
Publication date: 11 May 2015

Periklis Gogas and Ioannis Pragidis

The purpose of this paper is to test the effects of unanticipated fiscal policy shocks on the growth rate and the cyclical component of real private output and reveal different…

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Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to test the effects of unanticipated fiscal policy shocks on the growth rate and the cyclical component of real private output and reveal different types of asymmetries in fiscal policy implementation.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors use two alternative vector autoregressive systems in order to construct the fiscal policy shocks: one with the simple sum monetary aggregate MZM and one with the alternative CFS Divisia MZM aggregate. From each one of these systems we extracted four types of shocks: a negative and a positive government spending shock and a negative and a positive government revenue shock. These eight different types of unanticipated fiscal shocks were used next to empirically examine their effects on the growth rate and cyclical component of real private GNP in two sets of regressions: one that assumes only contemporaneous effects of the shocks on output and one that is augmented with four lags of each fiscal shock.

Findings

The authors come up with three key findings: first, all fiscal multipliers are below unity but with signs as predicted by Keynesian theory. Second, government expenditures have a larger impact as compared to the tax policy and finally, positive government spending shocks are more significant than negative spending shocks. All these results are in line with previous studies and are robust through many tests using structural identification proposed by Blanchard and Perotti (2002).

Practical implications

The empirical findings in this manuscript can be used for conducting a more efficient fiscal policy. The importance of government spending shocks is empirically verified along with the asymmetries related to price stickiness predicted by Keynesian theory. According to the results an efficient fiscal policy would: in terms of an expansionary policy, use government spending as a means to stimulate the economy instead of tax cuts and in the case of a contractionary policy use government revenue (higher taxes) so that the costs of this policy in terms of output lost are lower.

Originality/value

In this study the authors introduce three main innovations: first, to the best of our knowledge the Divisia monetary aggregates have not yet been used to previous research pertaining to fiscal policy. Second, following Cover’s (1992) procedure of identifying monetary policy shocks we extract the unanticipated fiscal policy shocks on government spending and revenue. Finally, the authors explicitly test for the asymmetric effects on the growth rate and the cyclical component of real private GNP of a contractionary and expansionary fiscal policy.

Details

Journal of Economic Studies, vol. 42 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0144-3585

Keywords

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