Rules governing monetary state financing vary across jurisdictions. The mainstream rationale for bans of state financing rests on the empirical assumption that monetary financing undermines fiscal discipline. We address the plausibility of this assumption by estimating local projection models for a panel of euro area countries to explore the reaction of the sovereigns’ fiscal position to a monetary policy shock. Our results suggest that fiscal discipline is not waning after an expansionary monetary policy innovation that can be related to non-standard policy interventions, as expressed through an improvement of the primary balance despite declining borrowing costs. While no compelling inferences can be made as to the driving force of this improvement – political pressure channeled through conditionality may be a plausible explanation – our results suggest that empirical claims on the adverse effect of unconventional monetary policy on fiscal discipline are ill-founded.

管理货币国家融资的规则因司法管辖区而异。禁止国家融资的主流理由基于货币融资破坏财政纪律的经验假设。我们通过估计一组欧元区国家的本地预测模型来探讨主权国家财政状况对货币政策冲击的反应，从而解决这一假设的合理性。我们的研究结果表明，在可能与非标准政策干预相关的扩张性货币政策创新之后，财政纪律并没有减弱，表现为尽管借贷成本下降，但主要余额的改善。