Fiscal policy uncertainty and its effects on the real economy: German evidence

Abstract

Abstract This article introduces a new measure of fiscal policy uncertainty (FPU) based on the disagreement among professional forecasters. We analyse different patterns of this measure for the German economy and also use Italian data for comparison. Especially, we examine the impact of the introduction of the German ‘debt brake’ on FPU. Finally, we conduct an impulse response analysis to investigate the effect of FPU on the real economy and we provide robust evidence that FPU significantly decreases the growth rate of industrial production. The corresponding effect is robust to various sensitivity checks and exceeds the impact of a general measure of economic policy uncertainty. In general, the negative effect on the real economy might be explained by lower hiring and investment by firms, higher costs of financing due to risk premia and lower consumption spending as a result of precautionary savings.