Spesa per interessi e ciclo economico: un'analisi empirica del caso italiano

Since the second half of the 1990s, with the beginning of the monetary unification process, interest expenditure has known a significant decrease both in absolute terms and in relation to GDP. The crisis of 2008 and the successive one of sovereign debts do not change the underlying trend of this variable but they significantly affect the width and the frequency of its cyclical fluctuations. From this point of view, in the new millennium, cyclical interest expenditure is characterized by significant pro-cyclicality. This connection, however, has lost its significance since the second half of 2012, when the President of the ECB, Mario Draghi, pronounced the “whatever it takes” speech. The evolution of the average return paid on newly issued securities was the fundamental determinant of the connection between interest expenditure and the economic cycle, although the emissions were always concentrated in the phases in which the yield was lower.