Fiscal policy in former Yugoslavian countries (2001–2014): stylised facts and budget elasticities

Abstract The aim of this paper is to analyse fiscal policy in former Yugoslavian countries over the period 2001–2014. The contribution of the paper is threefold; first, we build a homogeneous database to describe the evolution of the main fiscal aggregates in each country using an identical analytical structure. Second, we analyse the composition of national tax revenues to determine whether common patterns are still present, or if they have evolved in different ways over time. Third, we pool data to analyse and compute the elasticity of budget imbalance, taxes and expenditure to the output gap. Our results show that tax revenue composition is still similar and that the economic cycle is very relevant in explaining the dynamics of both deficit and expenditure over Gross Domestic Product, but not revenues