FIRSTRUN dataset of fiscal variables

FIRSTRUN dataset of fiscal variables and EU rules simulator

The FIRSTRUN (Fiscal Rules and Strategies under Externalities and Uncertainties) project is a European Union funded multinational research project that aims to investigate the need for fiscal policy coordination in the EU, to assess the coherence of the recent reforms in the economic governance framework, and to identify reforms to fill possible gaps in the current EU governance framework. The duration of the project is 36 months, starting on March 1, 2015 and ending on February 28, 2018.

The dataset of fiscal variables (Amecodata.xls) includes growth, investment, structural budget and output gap forecasts from the AMECO database, which is the macro-economic database of the European Commission’s Directorate General for Economic and Financial Affairs (DG ECFIN). The dataset consists of vintages of time series of the relevant variables starting from the spring 2000 vintage. As far as we know, these vintages are currently not readily available elsewhere, except for the most recent ones. We have obtained them directly from the DG ECFIN.

Amecodata.xls: Dataset of fiscal variables: Autumn 2017 forecast update [2017-11-22]
Note: Autumn 2013 vintage corrected
Readme.pdf: Updated list of variables [2017-11-22]

More information about the data and variables can be found on the European Commission’s AMECO webpage.

Historical vintages for IMF’s World Economic Outlook database and OECD’s Economic Outlook Database are available here:

• http://www.imf.org/external/ns/cs.aspx?id=28
• http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/economics/data/oecd-economic-outlook-statistics-and-projections_eo-data-en

If you have questions about the dataset of fiscal variables, please contact Tero Kuusi.

Also included: A program library designed to model the EU’s fiscal rules is now available. The library includes a (stochastic) simulation model that can be used to solve the minimum fiscal effort under the EU’s new fiscal rules. The simulation model is applied by Kuusi (2017, Finding the Bottom Line: A Quantitative Model of the EU’s Fiscal Rules and their Compliance).

Instructions are available inside the zipped package. The library is designed to run on MATLAB

FIRSTRUN Project was funded by the Horizon 2020 Framework Programme of the European Union (id: 649261).

Also see the project website http://www.firstrun.eu