Replication data for: Fiscal Governance in the Eurozone: How effectively does the Stability and Growth Pact limit governmental debt in the Euro countries?

The European sovereign debt crisis continues to hold Europe and the World captive. Will the Euro and the fiscal mechanism of the Eurozone survive? And how about the effectiveness of this Stability and Growth Pact (SGP) - do the Euro countries generally fail to comply with the rules of fiscal governance, or, does the Eurozone need a more member-specific fiscal mechanism? In this article, we examine whether and how the SGP influenced the development of governmental debt-making in the Euro countries after the introduction of the Euro. While the SGP could not prevent Euro countries from exceeding their deficits, our synthetic control-analysis reveals that the mechanism effectively reduced overall governmental debt of Euro countries since 1999. In particular donor countries were able to control governmental spending, while many recipient countries -“ including Greece, Portugal and Italy -“ increased governmental debt ever since, resulting in the European sovereign debt crisis. This suggests that while the SGP effectively constrained overall governmental debt-making, a more sophisticated mechanism is required for safeguarding compliance in large recipient countries.

欧洲主权债务危机至今仍持续束缚着欧洲乃至全球的发展。欧元与欧元区财政机制能否存续？《稳定与增长公约》（Stability and Growth Pact, SGP）的实施成效究竟如何？欧元区成员国是否普遍未能恪守财政治理规则？抑或是欧元区亟需更具针对性的成员国专属财政机制？本文旨在探究《稳定与增长公约》在欧元正式启用后，是否以及如何对欧元区成员国的政府债务举借行为产生影响。尽管该公约未能阻止欧元区成员国突破赤字上限，但我们开展的合成控制分析（synthetic control-analysis）显示，自1999年以来，该机制有效降低了欧元区成员国的整体政府债务规模。具体而言，部分捐助国能够有效管控政府支出，而包括希腊、葡萄牙与意大利在内的诸多受援国——自此之后政府债务持续攀升——最终引发了欧洲主权债务危机。这表明，尽管《稳定与增长公约》可有效约束整体政府债务举借行为，但仍需更为完善的机制，以保障大型受援国能够恪守财政规则。