Fiscal Sustainability of Health Systems Bridging Health and Finance Perspectives


Book Description

The health systems we enjoy today, and expected medical advances in the future, will be difficult to finance from public resources without major reforms. Public health spending in OECD countries has grown rapidly over most of the last half century. These spending increases have contributed to ...




Fiscal Sustainability in Theory and Practice


Book Description

Topics discussed in this publication include: an introduction to theoretical and practical aspects of fiscal sustainability; theoretical prerequisites for fiscal sustainability analysis; debt indicators in the measurement of vulnerability; cyclical adjustment of budget surplus; pro-cyclical fiscal policy using Mexico's fiscal accounts as a case study; fiscal rules and the experience of Chile; currency crises and models for deal with financing costs.




Public Debt Sustainability


Book Description

As countries recover from the coronavirus pandemic, they are confronted with an even more challenging debt crisis. Xavier Debrun argues in the foreword that in deciding where we go from here that there is no longer a consensus regarding the optimum design and enforcement of fiscal rules. Rather we must address a series of questions and challenges to the conventional wisdom. This book provides an opportunity for scholars to explore these questions from an international perspective, with reference to European countries, and emerging nations as well as the United States.




Public Debt Sustainability in Developing Asia


Book Description

Addressing the global financial crisis has required fiscal intervention on a substantial scale by governments around the world. The consequent buildup of public debt, in particular its sustainability, has moved to center stage in the policy debate. If the Asia and Pacific region is to continue to serve as an engine for global growth, its public debt must be sustainable. Public Debt Sustainability in Developing Asia addresses this issue for Asia and the Pacific as a whole as well as for three of the most dynamic economies in the region: the People’s Republic of China, India, and Viet Nam. The book begins with a discussion of the reasons for increased attention to debt-related issues. It also introduces fiscal indicators for the Asian Development. Bank’s developing member countries and economies. The sustainability of their debt is assessed through extant approaches and with the most up-to-date data sources. The book also surveys the existing literature on debt sustainability, outlining the main issues related to it, and discusses the key implications for the application of debt sustainability analysis in developing Asia. Also highlighted is the importance of conducting individual country studies in view of wide variations in definitions of public expenditure, revenues, contingent liabilities, government structures (e.g., federal), and the like, as well as the impact of debt on interest rates. The book further provides in-depth debt sustainability analyses for the People’s Republic of China, India, and Viet Nam. Public Debt Sustainability in Developing Asia offers a comprehensive analytical and empirical update on the sustainability of public debt in the region. It breaks new ground in examining characteristics that are crucial to understanding sustainability and offers richer policy analysis that should prove useful for policymakers, researchers, and graduate students.




Financial Sustainability in Public Administration


Book Description

This book analyses the methods used to assess financial sustainability as defined by the International Federation of Accountants (IFAC). Recently, there have been calls to consider sustainability as a fundamental guiding principle in public management. The financial and economic crisis has spurred a demand for greater financial sustainability in public administrations. Although the concept of sustainability has been traditionally associated with three dimensions (environmental, social and economic), this book is focuses on the metrics used to evaluate financial sustainability and explores the concept of financial health. It will be of interest to researchers and academics in the field of financial sustainability.




Sustainable Fiscal Policy and Economic Stability


Book Description

The public debt/GDP ratio in several countries showed the largest ever peacetime increase during the last 20 years of the 20th century, thereby causing widespread fiscal unsustainability. Towards the latter half of the 1990s, several governments initiated steps to reverse this trend, however, they frequently found that their policies were not always successful. This book examines why. that merely running a primary surplus to restore fiscal sustainability will not always work. In effect, governments may simply shift the problem to other sectors of the economy, therby creating economic instability. By linking the budget constraints of govenment and non-governmental agents at a macroeconomic level, the author's framework allows him to measure how changes to the budget of one economic sector are transferred to the budgetary position of another sector. By taking account of thes sectoral balance effects, as well as the role of uncertainty and expectations, the book develops a set of rules for the maintnance of fiscal sustainability and economic stability. position of fiscal sustainability, this book should be useful for economists and academic working on fiscal and macroeconomic policy, especially from a Post-Keynesian perspective, and policymakers interested in ensuring economic and fiscal stability.




Public Debt, Sustainability and Economic Growth


Book Description

Public debt has become a severe problem for a great many economies. While the effects of tax policies on the allocation of resources are readily derived, the mechanisms that make public deficits and debt influence the economy are not so easily understood. This book elaborates on the effects of public debt starting from the intertemporal budget constraint of the government. It is shown under which conditions a government can stick to the intertemporal budget constraint and then, demonstrated how public debt affects the growth process and welfare in market economies. The effects are derived for models with complete labor markets as well as taking into account labor market imperfections. The focus in this book is on fiscal policy issues, but it also deals with monetary policy aspects. The theoretical analysis is complemented with empirical time series analyses on debt sustainability and with panel studies dealing with the relationship between public debt and economic growth.




Indicators of Fiscal Sustainability


Book Description

This paper assesses the usefulness of summary measures of fiscal sustainability for the purpose of multilateral surveillance. An overview of the main conceptual issues is first presented. Next, an assessment is made of the strengths and weaknesses of the summary measures in the context of their recent application to industrial countries by the OECD and the Fund. The measures are shown to highlight the inadequacy of using trends in public debt ratios to assess sustainability. However, the measures and their recent application are subject to a number of caveats, in particular in relation to their sensitivity to the discount rate, time paths of government expenditures and private sector behavior.




Fiscal Sustainability


Book Description

This paper critically reviews recent work regarding the sustainability of public debt. It argues that Debt Sustainability Analyses (DSAs) should be more than mere mechanical simulation exercises. Instead, a DSA should be linked to some objective regarding the distribution of fiscal burdens and distortions over time (in the tradition of Barro’s 1979 tax smoothing objective). The paper discusses objective functions that yield simple and transparent fiscal policy rules.




Quantifying the Sustainability of Public Debt


Book Description

Despite its beneficial aspects, public debt can be hazardous for macroeconomic performance should it reach unrepayable levels as a consequence of snowballing explosive trends. Failure to monitor the existing trend in public debt in order to detect such divergences from the stable path, and the lack of an adaptive public financial management can potentially culminate in a public debt crisis whose disruptive economic impacts can permeate all sectors of the economy very swiftly. However, public debt sustainability is a vague concept with no straightforward operational definitions. In addition, its multi-faceted nature is an impediment for the implementation of real-world appraisal of the fiscal posture from a stability viewpoint. As such, quantifying the public debt sustainability is essential for overhauling the fiscal policies so as to avoid a potential debt crisis stemming from malfunctioning fiscal policies. This book provides the reader with a practical and straightforward framework that outlines a tool for undertaking public debt sustainability analysis. In order to guide further empirical investigations, the discussion in this book is underpinned by a real-world application of the model which highlights the practical aspects of the tool with reference to time-varying empirical evidence from a developing country.