OECD Journal on Budgeting

Frequency :
3 times a year
ISSN :
1681-2336 (online)
ISSN :
1608-7143 (print)
DOI :
10.1787/16812336
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The OECD journal on public sector budgeting, published three times per year. It draws on the best of the recent work of the OECD Working Party of Senior Budget Officials (SBO), as well as special contributions from finance ministries, and makes it available to a wider community in an accessible format. The journal provides insight on leading-edge institutional arrangements, systems and instruments for the allocation and management of resources in the public sector. Now published as a part of the OECD Journal subscription package.

Also available in: French
Article
 

Fiscal rules and regime-dependent fiscal reaction functions

The South African case You do not have access to this content

Authors:
Philippe Burger, Marina Marinkov
Publication Date
26 Mar 2012
Pages
4
Bibliographic information
No.:
4,
Volume:
12,
Issue:
1
Pages
1–29
DOI
10.1787/budget-12-5k9czxjth7tg

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This article argues the case for a policy of "anchored flexibility" in the form of a flexible fiscal rule that allows for the pursuit of economic stability but always anchors that pursuit in fiscal sustainability. The rule is explicitly structured to be simple and is designed in analogy to the inflation-targeting framework. The article heeds the warning that consistently forecasting the output gap with any degree of precision is quite difficult, if not impossible, and thus proposes a target band for the deficit, instead of point targets for the overall deficit and the structural budget balance. To ensure fiscal sustainability over and above the contribution of the deficit rule, the article also proposes a band for the debt/GDP ratio. This debt rule acts as a negative feedback rule that stipulates the adjustments required in the deficit, should the actual debt/GDP ratio move outside the stipulated band. Since the government needs to change revenue and expenditure in order to change the deficit, the article then explores empirically whether and with how much revenue and expenditure in South Africa changed to maintain fiscal sustainability. More specifically the article explores various models of the fiscal reaction function to illuminate government behaviour in South Africa. These models consider how the deficit, expenditure and different types of revenue reacted to the debt/GDP ratio and the output gap to ensure fiscal sustainability. Lastly, the article considers measures that could enhance the automatic stabilisers, while simultaneously allowing for the maintenance of fiscal sustainability in the medium term.