On Thursday 18th May, in room 117 of the WeiYu Building, Dr. HAIZHEN MOU gave a talk on Balanced budget laws and recessions. The title of her paper is “DO BALANCED BUDGET LAWS MATTER IN RECESSIONS?”
She first introduced the topic by presenting the history of implementation of Balanced Budget Laws in different regions in Canada. Then, she explained the main research questions:1. Do BBLs have any effect on the budget outcomes of Canadian provinces in the time period 1982-2013?2. Do BBLs have different effects on budget outcomes during recessions compared with normal economic conditions?
Then, she presented the literature review, introduced the Construct of BBL stringency index used in her paper with figures, as well as the figure showing the tendancy of Budget Balance, BBL, and GDP from 1980 to 2010. Then, she showed us the Estimation Equation with her Estimation methods. Finally, she summarized the main finding of the paper, presented some discussions and pointed out future studies.
During the talk, many teachers had raised questions about the topic and methods. Dr. Haizhen Mou explained her point of view and discussed with the teachers there.
