The Government Revenue–Expenditure Nexus in Southeast Europe: A Bootstrap Panel Granger-Causality Approach

This article presents one of the first attempts to explore the relationship between government revenues and government expenditures in six Southeast European countries for the period 1999–2015, employing a bootstrap panel Granger-causality approach, which provides insight into the nature and direction of their relationship in each country. The empirical results indicate a unidirectional relationship from government revenues to government expenditures in five countries (Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Serbia, and Slovenia), confirming the revenue-expenditure or tax-spend hypothesis. The findings offer support for the fiscal synchronization hypothesis only in Macedonia, where bidirectional causality between government revenues and government expenditures was found.