المستخلص: |
Having a stable and sustainable long-term relationship between government expenditures and revenues is a key requirement for macroeconomic stability. The most common way of analyzing a country’s fiscal position is to carry out fiscal sustainability assessment In this context, sustainability requires that today’s government debt is matched by an excess of future primary surpluses over primary deficits in present value terms. To gauge fiscal sustainability, the widely-used criterion is whether current fiscal policies can stabilize the debt to GDP ratio. Numerous studies suggest using indicators or econometric tests to determine whether this criterion is satisfied. This paper reviews the conceptual and operational framework of sustainability assessment approaches along with their merits and practical limitations, and the empirical evidence in support of/against each indicator and test of sustainability. Our objective is to provide a concise but thorough insight into the area of fiscal sustainability from a positive point of view. The overall finding is that determining whether the current fiscal policy stance is sustainable is important for policymakers because it indicates the need for policy correction.
|