ABSTRACT

Strategies for limiting public debt remain a constant issue in public policy and are set to become more salient considering the current high levels of public spending in response to the COVID-19 crisis. One noteworthy strategy has been the introduction of institutional debt brakes. Although public debt at the local level does not necessarily follow the same rules and trends as debt at the national level, debt brakes at the local level are not nearly as comprehensively covered by both public and scholarly debate. The adoption of voluntary debt brakes in several German municipalities in the last decade offers intra-state variance to assess their fiscal effectiveness. A generalised synthetic control analysis is applied to mitigate for the special challenges of causal attribution and rare treatment cases. This approach provides a clear result: on average debt brakes in their present form are unable to limit debt levels in the examined municipalities.

摘要

限制公共债务的策略仍然是公共政策中的一个长期问题，考虑到当前为应对 COVID-19 危机而进行的高水平公共支出，这种策略将变得更加突出。一项值得注意的策略是引入机构债务制动器。尽管地方层面的公共债务不一定遵循与国家层面债务相同的规则和趋势，但地方层面的债务制动并没有像公共和学术辩论那样全面。在过去十年中，德国多个城市采用自愿债务制动措施，为评估其财政有效性提供了州内差异。应用广义综合控制分析来减轻因果归因和罕见治疗案例的特殊挑战。这种方法提供了一个明确的结果：