Vet Fiscal Rules – Barry Poulson Center for Sustainable Fiscal Policies

To motivate and fully inform exit from unsustainable fiscal practices

State Calculator

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NEW, please communicate concerns about functionality or computational error to: john.merrifield@utsa.edu

State Fiscal Rules Calculator

This calculator will estimate key fiscal and economic effects of your fiscal rule specifications.

You can specify the baseline (specify a forecast as your ‘counter-factual’) or backcast, which means ask how things would have been different since year X had the fiscal rule been initiated that year.

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Calculator Description

The fiscal rules starting point is the Merrifield-Poulson State Fiscal Rule (MPSFR) described here.

That description also informs you of the data you must enter, and the specifications (Specs = model parameters; mostly policy choices) you can choose in the following windows. Each window offers a default parameter you can leave as is, if you wish.


Specify Forecast Period

Input the first (START) and last year (END) of your forecast data.

If, for example, the forecast you are using as a counterfactual provides annual values from 2019-2040, START = 2019, END = 2040.