Testing fiscal sustainability in OECD countries: new evidence from the past centuries

Using three complementary approaches that examine the fulfilment of the intertemporal budget constraint while avoiding explosive behaviour, this study examines the stationarity and the sustainability of public finance for six industrial countries over the period spanning from 1870 to 2017. According to Fourier DF unit root tests, time-varying fiscal reaction functions and threshold reaction functions, we find that longer-run debt sustainability is not rejected for the UK, Sweden, and for the US. The evidence is somewhat equivocal for Canada, Italy and Portugal.