Government Debt Sustainability in Iran: New Evidence from a Fiscal Reaction Function (FRF)

اقتصاد پولی مالی

Article 1, Volume 24, Issue 13, April 2017, Pages 1-29   

Document Type: پژوهشی

DOI: 10.22067/pm.v24i14.57593

Authors

saeed Karimi Potanlar; ahmad Jafari Samimi; jalal montazeri shoorekchali^*

University of Mazandaran

Abstract

The financial crisis of 2007-2008 and the cost of fiscal policy reform, increasingly revealed the importance of discussion on "government debt sustainability" in the economic literature. Accordingly, this paper examines government debt sustainability in the form of a Fiscal Reaction Function (FRF). To do so, a fiscal reaction function has been estimated using a Johansen Juselius cointegration method in Iran for the period 1971-2014. The results showed that the government's reaction was sustainable to the three types of debt (i.e., debt to the central bank, debt to domestic banks and non-bank financial institutions, and foreign debt). However, the small regression coefficients indicate a weak sustainability. In other words, as the public debt/GDP ratio increases, government does not respond by improving the primary balance. This problem, due to the impact of public debt on long-run economic growth through various channels can be an alarm for decision and policy makers. Also, findings confirm that fiscal policy in Iran is pro-cyclical. Therefore, it is recommended that, with the aim of creating a sustainable framework for fiscal policy, "debt sustainability" and "Business cycles" be considered as main variables in the objective function of fiscal policies in Iran.

Methodology
The issue of “fiscal sustainability” has taken on special importance in the aftermath of the global financial crisis. Although for fiscal sustainability is provided several definitions, almost all of these definitions are associated with fiscal policy. In a comprehensive definition, fiscal sustainability can be considered as a measure of fiscal dependence on the government's recent behaviors, compared to the last fiscal developments and changes in the macro-economic level. To empirically assess fiscal sustainability, the concept of “fiscal reaction function” can be used. Fiscal reaction functions usually specify, for annual data, the reaction of the primary balance/GDP ratio to changes in the one-period lagged public debt/GDP ratio, controlling for other influences. In other words, if the public debt/GDP ratio increases, government should respond by improving the primary balance, to arrest and even reverse the rise in the public debt/GDP ratio (Bohn, 1995, 2007). According to Burger, Stuart, Jooste and Cuevas (2011), the basic fiscal reaction function is in the following form:

Where:
B/Y= Primary Balance/GDP
D/Y= Government Debt/GDP
=Output Gap
Government Debt/GDP is three types:
Debt to the central bank/GDP (DCY)
Debt to domestic banks and non-bank financial institutions/GDP (DOY)
Foreign debt/GDP (DXY)

Results and discussion
In this section, we estimate fiscal reaction function using a Johansen Juselius cointegration method in Iran for the period 1971-2014. In the first step, the stationary of variables has been tested using the Ng-Perron and Lumsdaine and Papell tests. The results of stationary tests showed the four variables are non-stationary and only one variable is stationary. So the method of cointegration is a necessity. According to the results of unit root tests, fiscal reaction function has been estimated using a Johansen Juselius cointegration method. Johansen’s procedure builds cointegrated variables directly on maximum likelihood estimation instead of relying on OLS estimation. Finally, fiscal reaction function has been estimated as follows:

Based on the estimated equation, it can be said that the government's reaction was sustainable to the three types of debt (debt to the central bank, debt to domestic banks and non-bank financial institutions and foreign debt). However, the small regression coefficients indicate a weak sustainability. Also, the positive coefficient of the output gap showed that fiscal policy in Iran is countercyclical.

Conclusion
The rapid build-up of government debt in an environment of financial instability and low growth has increased the need for an assessment of government debt sustainability. Accordingly, this paper examines government debt sustainability in the form of a fiscal reaction function (FRF). The results of the estimating Johansen Juselius cointegration method confirmed that fiscal policy was not sensitive to react to the accumulation of the government debt. Therefore, due to the impact of public debt on long-run economic growth through various channels, it is necessary that "debt sustainability" be considered as a main variable in the objective function of fiscal policies in Iran.

Keywords

Debt Sustainability; Fiscal Reaction Function; fiscal policy; cointegration; Iran

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