The Australian Real‐Time Fiscal Database: An Overview with Illustrations of Its Use in Analysing Fiscal Policy

Lee, Kevin; Morley, James; Shields, Kalvinder; Tan, Madeleine Sui-Lay

Abstract

This paper describes a fiscal database for Australia including measures of government spending, revenue, deecits, debt and various sub-aggregates as initially published and subsequently revised. The data vintages are collated from various sources and provide a comprehensive description of the Australian scal environment as experienced in real-time. Methods are described which exploit the richness of the real-time datasets and they are illustrated through an analysis of the extent to which stated fiscal plans are realised in practice and through the estimation of fiscal multipliers which draw a distinction between policy responses and policy initiatives. We find predictable diierences between plans and actual scal policy and a larger multiplier for policy initiatives than implementation errors.

Citation

Lee, K., Morley, J., Shields, K., & Tan, M. S.-L. (2020). The Australian Real‐Time Fiscal Database: An Overview with Illustrations of Its Use in Analysing Fiscal Policy. Economic Record, 96(312), 87-106. https://doi.org/10.1111/1475-4932.12509

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Oct 22, 2019
• Online Publication Date: Dec 20, 2019
• Publication Date: Mar 1, 2020
• Deposit Date: Nov 5, 2019
• Publicly Available Date: Dec 21, 2021
• Journal: Economic Record
• Print ISSN: 0013-0249
• Electronic ISSN: 1475-4932
• Publisher: Wiley
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 96
• Issue: 312
• Pages: 87-106
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/1475-4932.12509
• Keywords: Real-time; Australian Database; Revisions; Fiscal Policy; Government Spend- ing; Government Revenues JEL Classication: C32; D84; E32
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/3060079
• Publisher URL: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1475-4932.12509
• Additional Information: This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Lee, K., Morley, J., Shields, K. and Tan, M.S.‐L. (2020), The Australian Real‐Time Fiscal Database: An Overview with Illustrations of Its Use in Analysing Fiscal Policy. Econ Rec, 96: 87-106, which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1111/1475-4932.12509. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Use of Self-Archived Versions.
• Contract Date: Nov 5, 2019