Fiskální pravidla a jejich dopady na zadluženost v zemích Evropské unie

Abstract

This diploma thesis focuses on the topic of government debt and fiscal rules. The aim of the thesis is to formulate a theoretical basis of the problem, to present an overview regarding the development of the variables of interest and to evaluate the impacts of fiscal rules on indebtedness in the European Union countries considering other determinants. The interest of economic policies regarding implementation and expansion of fiscal rules increases gradually with the growth of government debts. The excessive indebtedness can, in extreme cases, trigger the debt crisis which brings the worst consequences of all economic crises. Fiscal rules may have many forms, the most common rules in the European Union are balance rules and debt rules. Fiscal rules are often implemented differently in individual countries. A fiscal rules index has been designed by the European Commission for better comparison of rules among countries. The values of this index are further used to estimate the model. In this work, we employ panel regression analysis to the data of the oldest member states of the European Union in the period 1997-2019. The results show that fiscal rules are an important determinant that has positive effects on reducing government debt. The resulting model also describes relationships between government debt and other variables such as real gross domestic product, inflation, long-term nominal interest rates and the presence of banking and debt crisis.