Are Greek government deficit and debt statistics reliable?

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to analyze the statistical properties of the Greek government deficit and debt figures compiled and reported to the European Commission since 1994 for the period 1991 to 2012. On the basis of successive revisions in reported data, it assesses the reliability of budgetary statistics and derives a number of reliability indicators. According to the standard deviations of revisions between the first outturn and final data, Greece have reported the least reliable deficit figures and have had the largest dispersion of revisions. The paper has also shown that data on the yearly changes in debt have been less reliable than those on the deficit. Whatever the cause of these findings, we believe that they create problems for users of the data.