APPLYING FISCAL IMPULSE IN ROMANIA IN PERIOD 2002-2013: DECREASING FISCAL PRESSURE VERSUS RISING TRANSFER PAYMENTS

The first goal of a market economy is to obtain and preserve, in long term, economic growth; for this goal, there are a number of tools – macroeconomic policies, there is: fiscal policy, monetary policy, budgetary policy, etc. – at disposal of policy makers, so as to make such a project come true. This is not so easy, however: all these tools must be carefully calibrated and carefully used. One of the most important policy is fiscal policy (which can be defined, in brief, as the sum of all measures, procedures, tools and policies a government uses so as to modify, to its liking, macroeconomic outcomes); an important tool, also, is monetary policy – which tinkers, so to speak, with money, in all its forms and shapes. This paper, however, it is not limited to simply assess, theoretically, best uses for fiscal policy; it aims to analyze, meaningfully, the effectiveness of fiscal policy in Romania, between years 2002 and 2013, in order, not only to state what did go wrong with it in that interval, but to establish best ways in which, in Romania, fiscal policy – and monetary policy – can be put to best use, inclusively in order to do what is to be done for achieving long-lasting economic growth in the future.