The Euro-Dividend: Public Debt and Interest Rates in the Monetary Union

Quaderni - Working Papers DSE No. 695

22 Pages Posted: 24 Sep 2010

See all articles by Luigi Marattin

Luigi Marattin

University of Bologna - Department of Economics

Simone Salotti

Oxford Brookes University

Date Written: February 15, 2010

Abstract

The ongoing massive fiscal policy stimulus triggered increasing concerns on the potential impact on interest rate levels, as economic theory predicts. Particularly, the deterioration of some EMU countries’ fiscal positions has been putting at risk Eurozone’ financial stability. In this paper, we estimate a Panel VAR (PVAR) model on the EMU area employing annual data from 1970 to 2008 in order to assess the qualitative and quantitative impact of public debt on interest rates Our results show that prior to the introduction of the Euro an increase in public debt led to positive and significant effect on long-term nominal interest rates, with a stronger effect for high-debt countries. After the introduction of the single currency, the effect vanishes (in line with Bernoth 2004). We interpret this result as a confirmation of the crucial role of the monetary union in weakening the automatic risk-premium-based channel between debt shocks and returns on government bond.

Keywords: Panel VAR, Fiscal policy, government bond’s yields

JEL Classification: E62, G12

Suggested Citation

Marattin, Luigi and Salotti, Simone, The Euro-Dividend: Public Debt and Interest Rates in the Monetary Union (February 15, 2010). Quaderni - Working Papers DSE No. 695, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1681347 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1681347

Luigi Marattin (Contact Author)

University of Bologna - Department of Economics ( email )

Strada Maggiore 45
Bologna, Bologna 40125
Italy
0512092606 (Phone)

Simone Salotti

Oxford Brookes University ( email )

United Kingdom

HOME PAGE: http://simonesalotti.wordpress.com

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

Paper statistics

Downloads
133
Abstract Views
885
Rank
387,988
PlumX Metrics