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This paper assesses the usefulness of summary measures of fiscal sustainability for the purpose of multilateral surveillance. An overview of the main conceptual issues is first presented. Next, an assessment is made of the strengths and weaknesses of the summary measures in the context of their recent application to industrial countries by the OECD and the Fund. The measures are shown to highlight the inadequacy of using trends in public debt ratios to assess sustainability. However, the measures and their recent application are subject to a number of caveats, in particular in relation to their sensitivity to the discount rate, time paths of government expenditures and private sector behavior.
This paper examines external adjustment in the United States, Japan and Germany from the perspective of net foreign asset positions. It asks two questions: What are, in the long run, the determinants of net foreign asset equilibrium? and: What are, in the short run, some of the adjustment mechanisms sustaining that equilibrium? An analysis of post-war data produces two insights. First, using a cointegration approach, the existence of long-run net foreign asset equilibrium can be identified: it is a function of demographic variables and public debt. Second, deviations from long-run equilibrium give rise to feedback through different components of domestic absorption in the three countries.