Planning or Propaganda? An Evaluation of Germany's Medium-Term Budgetary Planning

26 Pages Posted: 14 Feb 2005

See all articles by Friedrich Heinemann

Friedrich Heinemann

ZEW – Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research; University of Heidelberg - Alfred Weber Institute for Economics

Date Written: 2005

Abstract

In Germany, the medium-term financial planning ("Mifrifi") was introduced at the end of the sixties. This study scrutinizes the experience of the German Bund with more than thirty years of financial planning. In the first step, the paper explores the potential normative and political-economic driving forces of fiscal projections. The following empirical part evaluates Mifrifi's forecasting quality with regard to expenditures, taxes and deficits. A model is tested relating the forecasted budgetary trends to economic, institutional and political-economic factors. The financial planning turns out to be ineffective in making budgetary policy more predictable. The projections are heavily biased towards over-optimism. The Maastricht Treaty appears to have transformed Germany's budgetary planning not into the direction of more credible and binding projections, but rather towards the production of less realistic and unduly favourable outlooks. The policy conclusion hints towards an independent institution taking over the responsibility for fiscal forecasts. Such an institution would not face the government's inherent problem being unable to promise in a credible way the production of unbiased forecasts.

Keywords: Mifrifi, budgetary planning, Stability and Growth Pact

JEL Classification: H61, H87

Suggested Citation

Heinemann, Friedrich, Planning or Propaganda? An Evaluation of Germany's Medium-Term Budgetary Planning (2005). ZEW Discussion Paper No. 05-12, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=666762 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.666762

Friedrich Heinemann (Contact Author)

ZEW – Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research ( email )

P.O. Box 10 34 43
L 7,1
D-68034 Mannheim, 68034
Germany

HOME PAGE: http://www.zew.de

University of Heidelberg - Alfred Weber Institute for Economics ( email )

Grabengasse 14
Heidelberg, D-69117
Germany

Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?

Paper statistics

Downloads
105
Abstract Views
1,118
Rank
462,937
PlumX Metrics