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We construct a comprehensive public sector balance sheet for Finland from 2000 to 2016 by complementing general government statistics with data on public corporations and public pensions. We show that exposure to valuation changes in equity markets through asset holdings and increases in pension liabilities relative to GDP amplify crisis impacts on public finances. We expand the balance sheet by including present value estimates of future fiscal flows; this allows us to perform fiscal stress tests and policy experiments. These analyses suggest that Finland’s public finances will remain sound provided ongoing reform and consolidation efforts to address aging pressures are implemented as planned.
This paper discusses Finland’s public sector balance sheet. The public sector balance sheet approach expands analysis of public finances beyond government debt to also include government assets, public corporations, and pension liabilities. For Finland, it shows that static public sector net worth is negative at some 160 percent of GDP. This implies that Finland’s future fiscal balances and policies will have to be sufficiently strong to compensate, and also to address future spending pressures from rising health and long-term care. The intertemporal balance sheet shows that Finland’s current medium-term fiscal framework meets this criterion—but only if health and social services reform achieves the targeted savings in public spending during the 2020s. In light of numerous risks it would be prudent to use the present economic upswing to make early headway in rebuilding buffers. Finland has a track record of prudent fiscal policy. During good economic times, the authorities have run sizable fiscal surpluses.
This paper compiles the Intertemporal Public Sector Balance Sheets for all G7 countries and examines their relationship with government borrowing costs. In 2018, all G7 countries have negative Intertemporal Net Financial Worth (INFW), falling short of their intertemporal budget constraint. A decomposition of the evolution of INFW shows that short-term fluctuations are mainly driven by fiscal policy changes, while in the long run demographic changes and health and pension obligations play a larger role. We find that on average a 10 percentage point of GDP increase in INFW reduces the (future) 10-1 year sovereign yield curve spread by 2.8 basis points. This results suggest that financial markets pay attention to governments’ future policy obligations, in addition to its current assets and liabilities.
Public sector balance sheets provide the most comprehensive picture of public wealth. They bring together all the accumulated assets and liabilities that the government controls, including public corporations, natural resources, and pension liabilities. They thus account for the entirety of what the state owns and owes, offering a broader fiscal picture beyond debt and deficits. Most governments do not provide such transparency, thereby avoiding the additional scrutiny it brings. Better balance sheet management enables countries to increase revenues, reduce risks, and improve fiscal policymaking. There is some empirical evidence that financial markets are increasingly paying attention to the...
Based on a permanent income analysis, Gagnon (2018) has prominently suggested that Norway has saved too much, thereby free-riding on the rest of the world for demand. Our public sector balance sheet analysis comes to the opposite conclusion, chiefly because it also accounts for future aging costs. Unsurprisingly, we find that Norway’s current assets exceed its liabilities by some 340 percent of mainland GDP. But its nonoil fiscal deficits have grown very large (to almost 8 percent of mainland GDP) and aging pressures are only commencing. Therefore, Norway’s intertemporal financial net worth (IFNW) is negative, at about -240 percent of mainland GDP. As IFNW represents an intertemporal budget constraint, this implies that Norway’s savings are likely insufficient to address aging costs without additional fiscal action.
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We analyze the US public sector balance sheet and project it forward under the assumption that current policies remain in place. We first document the history of the balance sheet and its components since World War II, with a detailed account of its evolution during and after the global financial crisis. While, based on assets and liabilities alone, public sector net worth is negative, additional challenges arise from commitments to future spending implied by current legislation and demographic trends. To quantify the risks to the balance sheet, we then apply the macroeconomic scenarios from the Federal Reserve’s bank stress test to the public sector balance sheet.
Brookings Papers on Economic Activity: Spring 2011 • Job Search, Emotional Well-Being, and Job Finding in a Period of Mass Unemployment: Evidence from High-Frequency Longitudinal Data By Alan B. Krueger and Andreas Mueller • Financially Fragile Households: Evidence and Implications By Annamaria Lusardi, Daniel Schneider, and Peter Tufano • Let's Twist Again: A High-Frequency Event-Study Analysis of Operation Twist and Its Implications for QE2 By Eric T. Swanson • An Exploration of Optimal Stabilization Policy By N. Gregory Mankiw and Matthew Weinzierl • What Explains the German Labor Market Miracle in the Great Recession? By Michael C. Burda and Jennifer Hunt • Inflation Dynamics and the Great Recession By Laurence Ball and Sandeep Mazumder