Academic literature on the topic 'Finance, Public Fiscal policy Benin Benin'

There has been a substantial improvement in the financial position of the public sector over the past year. The PSBR is expected to fall from 3 per cent of GDP in 1996/97 to about 1¼ per cent of GDP in the current fiscal year. The restrictive policy promised over a number of years, together with the effects of the economic cycle, is now having the desired effect. Further action by the new government to raise the tax burden has also improved the outlook for the public finances. Public borrowing is expected to continue to fall and the public sector balance sheet should begin to improve from the start of this year.

Since 1997, the Department of Economics of the University of Crete has organized an annual international conference on macroeconomic analysis and international finance. The articles included in this special issue are refereed versions of papers presented at the 17th International Conference on Macroeconomic Analysis and International Finance held at the University Campus, Rethymno, 30 May–1 June 2013, and submitted to Macroeconomic Dynamics in an open call for papers. The central theme of this Special Issue is Growth, Optimal Fiscal and Monetary Policy, and Financial Frictions. The topics discussed in this issue are endogenous growth and public investment and taxation; optimal inflation and fiscal and monetary policy; foreign reserve accumulation and China's exchange rate policy; and liquidity shocks and financial frictions. We begin the Special Issue with an overview of these papers.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the problem of fiscal sustainability for a panel of developing Asian economies. Design/methodology/approach In this study, cross-section dependence and heterogeneity are controlled while estimating the fiscal reaction function, which shows how governments react to the accumulation of public debt. The study employs the common correlated effects mean group estimator in Pesaran (2006) for a panel of 22 developing Asian economies for the period 1999‒2017. Findings It is found that the fiscal sustainability issue in the region is not so benign as in previous studies. Overall, fiscal policy is unsustainable, even for the nonlinear fiscal rule. Country-specific long-run coefficients are also examined in the study. Research limitations/implications The findings show that many developing economies in the region could not satisfy the intertemporal budget constraint, which raises concerns about debt sustainability in the area, especially for the post-crisis period. Originality/value This study investigates whether governments can maintain the sustainability of public finances in the long-run, if the ratios of public debt over GDP and primary deficit over GDP continue their recent problematic trends. Another novelty is controlling for heterogeneous effects among the countries in the region to give a more precise picture of debt sustainability. The empirical evidence also supports that insolvency risk can occur at low levels of public debt.

PurposeIdentifying tools for predicting fiscally distressed local governments has received heightened attention following the Great Recession of 2007–2009. Despite the recent expansion of research, measuring fiscal distress is challenging because of the operational complexity associated with the term. Furthermore, many local governments are too small to produce a Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR), upon which many empirical studies of fiscal condition or fiscal distress are based. This study designs a parsimonious tool for identifying fiscally distressed entities based on existing literature. The authors examine Nebraska's 93 counties over a nine-year period (from 2010 to 2018). In order to ensure the validity of our tool, we replicate two well-known empirical approaches of assessing local fiscal condition and compare the results with ours. The authors find nearly all counties in Nebraska to be free from fiscal distress in the past decade. However, since most counties in Nebraska have small populations and are far from urban centers, they may still be vulnerable to future fiscal shocks and may need to closely monitor their fiscal condition.Design/methodology/approachThe authors offer a parsimonious method for assessing the existence of fiscally distressed counties. They select predictors of fiscal distress based on two criteria. First, for the purpose of this study, the authors use financial information that is uniform, easily accessible and does not rely on CAFRs. In order to make their model parsimonious and replicable, the authors only consider factors that have the most decisive effects on local fiscal conditions. Second, the authors draw on indicators that have been consistently supported by previous studies (e.g., Kloha et al., 2005; Gorina et al., 2018). The authors test the validity of this approach using correlation analysis and regression modeling, similar to Wang et al. (2007).FindingsThe authors’ fiscal distress measure shows encouraging signs. Results show that all but Brown's model are highly correlated. The decile and standard deviation models have the strongest correlation (r = 0.955, p < 0.01). These two models are also significantly associated with Kloha et al.'s model. Their correlation coefficients are 0.812 and 0.830, respectively. Consistent with Wang et al. (2007), the authors find modest associations between our fiscal measures and socioeconomic measures.Research limitations/implicationsLimitations include questions of generalizability – we are only studying Nebraska counties. The extent to which the findings are generalizable to counties in other states remains to be seen. We advise readers and policymakers to bear in mind that at this point, there is no perfect way to measure local fiscal condition or fiscal distress. Specifically, with our model, the foremost advantages of parsimony are data accessibility and replicability. However, unlike other existing tools that consider dozens of indicators, our tool bears the cost of not employing a more comprehensive perspective that may be required to capture a full picture of local fiscal condition.Practical implicationsThe purpose of this research was to construct and present a parsimonious way of identifying local fiscal distress that is easily replicated and applied in practice. The challenges were operational – both in terms of definition and measurement. Fiscal distress is a nebulous concept that can vary based on the researcher's intent. Our chosen set of indicators have two characteristics: accessibility of financial information and consistency with past studies. Thus, we assess two of the four dimensions of solvency: budgetary solvency and long-run solvency. The authors suggest that this effort should not be used as a tool by state lawmakers to accuse and judge local governments. Instead, it should be used to assist local governments as Iowa and Colorado do. The findings could be the beginning of a conversation between the state and local governments to determine the best course(s) of action. As previously mentioned, there are many causes of fiscal distress and poor decision-making is not very common. Looking into the future, the authors expect more local governments to become fiscally distressed and the primary cause would be economic/demographic change. Since many local governments in Nebraska have very small populations and are far from the urban centers of Omaha and Lincoln, they might be vulnerable to future fiscal shocks. Thus, state lawmakers need to begin considering strategies to deal with local fiscal distress. The authors do have limitations in measurement. However, if used appropriately, this research can add value to the discussion of managing local government fiscal distress in Nebraska and other similar states.Social implicationsWhile the analysis finds little fiscal distress currently in Nebraska, there is concern that with population migration to the urban areas and the “graying” of the state, local governments in rural areas (the vast majority in Nebraska) could face more serious issues in future years. A recent study showed that local fiscal condition is negatively associated with the distance from the municipality to the urban centers of Omaha and Lincoln (Maher et al., 2019). These spatial effects could be further exacerbated in a state that ranks near the bottom in financial support of local governments and policy makers are committed to “controlling” property taxes.Originality/valueThis study, while building on prior work, is unique in that it focuses on counties as opposed to municipalities, which are the most common units of analysis. The authors also offer a model for assessing fiscal distress in a state that currently does not have state-level systems to monitor local finances. Finally, rather than relying on audited annual financial reports which would disqualify many smaller local governments, the authors offer a parsimonious tool that is easily replicated and can be used by all local governments that submit uniform financial reports to their states.

Smoking is one of the most researched risk factor around the world. This is because the bad consequences of smoking over life quality given by the morbidity and the mortality attributable to smoking. One of the main points to make stronger the smoking control is the use of the fiscal policy specially the tributary one. The implementation of effectives fiscals policy to smoking control must begin in the full understand about smoking impact over the society, the health and the economy. Several Cuban researcher had written about smoking epidemiologic consequences but the author who had written about the fiscal consequences attributable to smoking in Cuba are few and the researches too. That’s why this paper looks for describing the smoking fiscal space in Cuba. In Cuba smoking reduces the potential possibilities to obtain tributaries income from taxes over salaries because of the labor productivity lose, increase the spends from Public Health and Social Security and create serious uncertain about the foreign tobacco trade to finances the international currency needs from the tobacco sector and the induced needs from smoking to the Public Health.

The difficult political and economic situation in Ukraine presupposes an immediate solution to the issue of increasing the efficiency of the formation and distribution of public finances and their transparency. Digital technologies have great potential for improving public financial management, and will significantly change traditional fiscal policy instruments over time. The digital economy has been identified as one of the main directions of development of the Ukrainian economy for the next decade. Theoretical issues of digital transformation of public finances of Ukraine are investigated. If technology is used wisely, fiscal policy will be more efficient, transparent, fair, which will have a positive impact on the standard of living and economic development of Ukraine. The potential benefits are huge, so the government will have access to better data and more efficiently and transparently form and allocate financial resources. The necessity of digitalization at the present stage taking into account global processes. The recommendations of international financial organizations on digitalization of public finances and features of their application in the Ukrainian realities are covered. The main direct and indirect beneficiaries are identified and the positive effects of digital transformation of public finances are identified. The main ones are: increase in tax revenues; better forecasting and budgeting; fair distribution of social benefits. The financing of the digital transformation of public finances in Ukraine, which is mostly due to international technical assistance, is analyzed. The current state of digitalization of public finances and the main platforms of open data are studied, the potential of development is estimated. The main challenges of implementing the digital transformation in public finances are highlighted: cybersecurity, loss of personal data, unauthorized change of data in registers; untimely data update, impossibility of compilation, data formatting, existence of several platforms of the same type; blocking the disclosure of data by individual participants, hiding data; system failures; lack of qualified personnel to develop and configure the system; ethical issues of data disclosure; increasing competition and the quality of the IT services market in Ukraine; standardization of quality of digital services. Thus, increasing trust in the government and effective interaction between the population, business and the state, reducing corruption - all this is possible due to the digitalization of Ukraine's economy, which must first begin from public finances.