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Fiscal sustainability and the fiscal reaction function for South Africa
How does the South African government react to changes in its debt position? In investigating the question, this paper estimates fiscal reaction functions using various methods (OLS, VAR, TAR, GMM, State-Space modelling and VECM). The paper finds that since 1946 the South African government has ran a sustainable fiscal policy, by reducing the primary deficit or increasing the surplus in response to rising debt. Looking ahead, the paper considers the use of fiscal reaction functions to forecast the debt/GDP ratio and gauging the likelihood of achieving policy goals with the aid of probabilistic simulations and fan charts.
The Green Frontier: Assessing the Economic Implications of Climate Action
Addressing climate change will entail major challenges for economic growth, employment, inflation, and public finances. Mitigating the impact of global warming will yield benefits and costs that are yet to be quantified and defined for the global economy and for nations, workers, households, and companies. The Green Frontier: Assessing the Economic Implications of Climate Action offers research originally presented at a major conference at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in June 2023 in Washington, DC, organized to shed light on this still unexplored field of study and recommend policies for the future.
Sleepwalking to the Cliff Edge? A Wake-up Call for Global Climate Action
Urgent action to cut greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is needed now. Early next year, all countries will set new emissions targets for 2035 while revising their 2030 targets. Global GHGs must be cut by 25 and 50 percent below 2019 levels by 2030 to limit global warming to 2°C and 1.5°C respectively. But current targets would only cut emissions by 12 percent, meaning global ambition needs to be doubled to quadrupled. Further delay will lead to an ‘emissions cliff edge’, implying implausible cuts in GHGs and putting put 1.5°C beyond reach. This Note provides IMF staff’s annual assessment of global climate mitigation policy. It illustrates options for equitably aligning country targets with the Paris Agreement’s temperature goals. It also provides guidance on modelling needed to set emissions targets and quantify climate mitigation policy impacts.
Core Topics in Pre-Operative Anaesthetic Assessment and Management
A practical guide to pre-operative management planning for trainee and consultant anaesthetists.
Latin America and the Caribbean Economic Review, April 2024
Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) has made slow but consistent progress addressing the imbalances induced by the pandemic in an international environment that is just now showing signs of stabilizing. Despite favorable macroeconomic management, high interest rates and fiscal imbalances remain challenging while growth rates remain lackluster due to long-standing structural issues. Looking forward, an aging workforce and rising violence will increasingly complicate policy. This report focuses particularly on weak competitive forces as a source of low productivity, low growth, and low welfare in LAC. It emphasizes the need for effective competition institutions, pro-competition regulatory frameworks, complementary policies to improve the capabilities of workers and firms, and enhanced innovation systems, to prepare local industries to reach the technological frontier and face global competition. Furthermore, the report underscores the need for reforms to prevent large businesses from exerting undue political influence over policy decisions.
Safe Debt and Uncertainty in Emerging Markets
This paper develops a methodology for estimating a safe public debt level that would allow countries to remain below a maximum sustainable debt limit, taking into account the impact of uncertainty. Our analysis implies that fiscal policy should target a debt level well below the debt ceiling to allow space to absorb shocks that are likely to hit the economy. To illustrate our findings we apply the methodology to estimate a safe debt level for South Africa. Our results suggest that South Africa’s debt ceiling is around 60 percent of GDP, although uncertainty is high. Simulations suggest targeting a debt-to-GDP ratio of 40 percent of GDP would allow South Africa to remain below this debt ceiling over the medium-term with a high degree of confidence.
Reshaping Norms
South Asia's growth rate has returned to pre-pandemic levels. However, the uneven recovery from the pandemic has left countries in South Asia with multiple policy challenges, which are exacerbated by the impact of the war in Ukraine. While several countries are navigating rising inflation and growing difficulties to finance fiscal deficits and trade deficits, the region must also chart a new way forward to address rising inequality, unleash new growth potential, and accommodate an energy transition. To reshape their economies, the region cannot avoid redesigning tax systems, increasing competition, and challenging vested interests and existing gender norms. This issue of the South Asia Economic Focus, describes recent economic developments, analyzes the economic impact on South Asia of the war in Ukraine, presents growth forecasts, provides risk scenarios, and concludes that reshaping economies goes hand in hand with reshaping norms.
St. Lucia
This paper takes stock of St. Lucia’s plans to manage climate change, from the perspective of their macroeconomic implications, and suggests macro-relevant reforms that could strengthen the likelihood of success of the national strategy. To meet its renewable energy plans, St. Lucia will need to mobilize private investment. External assistance will be needed to develop supporting infrastructure. Building capacity for project assessment and investment promotion is a high priority, to shape needed investments into bankable projects. Elsewhere, capacity-building would be most useful to help cost sectoral plans, complete the disaster-preparedness strategy, move toward carbon taxation, and strengthen skills in public investment management and public financial management.
Republic of Kazakhstan
Kazakhstan is vulnerable to transition risk due to the importance of its energy- and emissions-intensive sectors. Domestic and global climate policies would negatively affect Kazakhstan’s economy, its firms, industries, and banks, with heterogenous impacts across industries and banks. Using both micro and macro modeling approaches, the climate risk analysis suggests Kazakhstani banks are exposed to significant transition risk from domestic and, more importantly, global climate policies. The risk is especially higher for carbon intensive sectors, such as fossil fuel extraction, refining, and electricity generation. Banks with large exposure to emissions-intensive sectors experience up to 30 percent additional losses under a disorderly 1.5°C scenario over a 5-to-7-year horizon, compared to the baseline. Banks with a small share of portfolio with emissions-intensives sectors may still experience losses, as climate change mitigation actions affect the economy at large and the financial health of individual consumers, businesses, and industries.
World Development Report 2022
The COVID-19 pandemic triggered the largest global economic crisis in more than a century. In 2020, economic activity contracted in 90 percent of countries, the world economy shrank by about 3 percent, and global poverty increased for the first time in a generation. Governments responded rapidly with fiscal, monetary, and financial policies that alleviated the worst immediate economic impacts of the crisis. Yet the world must still contend with the significant longer-term financial and economic risks caused by, or exacerbated by, the pandemic and the government responses needed to mitigate its effects.World Development Report 2022: Finance for an Equitable Recovery examines the central role ...
