Temporary measures and off-budget activities (MNB Public Finance Workshop, 2007)

The MNB had decided to organise a workshop on fiscal gimmicks such as off-budget activities and temporary measures. The issue of off-budget operations is usually ignored within the EU – the first mention of loss-making public companies was made in the Commission’s latest country report on Portugal. The concept of temporary measures was introduced by the new Stability and Growth Pact. However, their identification may prove very difficult in practice, since there is no common methodology. In fact, capital injections are often claimed to be related to temporary measures, without recognising the underlying causes, namely, the off-budget operations hidden in the corporate sector. This volume consists of seven papers and three discussions.

The complete volume can be downloaded here:

Temporary measures and off-budget activities (MNB Public Finance Workshop, 2007)

The articles of this volume can be separately downloaded below:

• Introduction
• Dubravko Mihaljek: Fiscal transparency from central banks’ perspective: off-budget activities and government asset funds
• Gábor P. Kiss: One-off and off-budget items: An alternative approach
• Ana Corbacho: Hungary: Fiscal risks from public transport enterprises
• Isabel Argimón-Francisco Martí: Available data on-budget and off-budget activities of Spanish central, state and local governments
• Sandro Momigliano-Pietro Rizza: Temporary measures in Italy: buying or losing time?
• Laurent Paul-Christophe Schalck: Transfers to the government of public corporation pension liabilities: The French case study
• Dr. Jürgen Hamker: Temporary measures and off-budget activities - developments in Germany