trends and future of sustainable development - TransEco

panacea; furthermore, unlegislated fiscal rules can also be conducive to fiscal discipline. What is ratherinteresting in the Finnish success is the lack of independent fiscal institution. One can interpret themajor findings of Schick (2003), Corbacho and Schwartz (2007) in case of Finland as follows, fiscal rulescould perform well without establishment of further fiscal institution due to realistic deficit targets andthe political commitment to fiscal discipline based on broad consensus as well as the efficient evaluationmechanism. And what is even more important is the fact that Finland’s economic background provided apromising growth perspective through innovation by fending off the evaporation of social trust towardsgovernmental institutions. 1The consolidation was shortly followed by significant increase in the real GDP growth, still,deciphering whether what particular factors played key role in the emergence of non-Keynesian shorttermexpansionary effect is extremely difficult. Regarding the short-term recovery, we refrain fromgiving credit to such an argument that considers the short-term expansionary effect as directrepercussions of the implemented fiscal consolidation. Instead, we emphasise that this effect wasindirect rather than a direct one and it was sparked by some anti-cyclical behaviour raising the level ofspecific items of expenditure. The expenditure-side fiscal adjustment served as an engine for therecuperation by providing ammunition for the national innovation and technology policy which tendedits supportive focus on higher education, higher-level vocational training, R&D as well as on the renewalof industrial specifications. Insofar it can be ascertained that the Finnish coalition governmentintelligently recognised fields that are worth to be concentrated on. The Finnish fiscal policy born thestamp to a high degree of disruptivity, because its transformative power contributed to the industrialrestructuring, as well, i.e. to leave the resource based economic paradigm behind. Naturally, thistransformation was accompanied by the structural adaptation of the Finnish public finance to the newcircumstances.6. Concluding remarksAlthough the mature discipline of sustainability economics cannot be clearly seen yet, it can be claimedthat the need of sustainability can be originated in the human nature whose specific features call on theenhancement of the state’s role for being an informant of sustainability. We argue that there isincreasingly need for policies with longer perspectives. Innovative fiscal policy pervaded by holistic viewshould integrate the volatility of environmental, social as well as economic processes in order to havecapabilities both to sustain (sustaining character) and to change (disruptive character) the structure inthe long run. This implies that the innovative fiscal policy is neither pure pro-cyclical nor anti-cyclical.Existing beside each other is a core constituent of innovative fiscal policy. Beyond trust and positiveexpectations – which are to a large extent influencing the emergence of Kaldor-Hicksian expansionary1 According to Kornai (2010), the major prerequisites of an impulsive innovation process in capitalism are thefollowing: decentralised initiation; high rewards; competition; opportunity for wide experiments and flexibility offinancing. Decentralised initiation means that every business actor (e.g. SMEs) can determine themselves what theywant to invest in. Ultimately, the most successful innovations are accompanied by an enormous amount of financialreward including long-lasting reputation. The success of the innovation relies to a large extent on the availablefinancial resources and the absorption capacity of the society. While the financial flexibility was provided by theconsolidation, the latter offered a wide arena for extensive experimenting, which was to a large degree the case inNokia’s success in Finland.284