abstract: This dissertation develops a framework for the analysis of fiscal sustainability among U.S. local governments. Fiscal sustainability is defined as a type of fiscal condition that allows a government to continue service provision now and in the future without introducing disruptive revenue or expenditure patterns. An assessment of local fiscal sustainability is based on three types of indicators: pension liability funding, debt burden, and budgetary balance. Three main factors affect a government's long-term financial condition: government structure, financial structure and performance, and local economic base. This dissertation uses a combination of the U.S. Census Bureau Annual Survey of Government Finances and Employment, the U.S. Census Bureau Decennial Census, the Bureau of Labor Statistics data, and the Government Finance Officers Association financial indicators database to study the effects of the three factors on local fiscal sustainability. It is a pioneer effort to use government-wide accounting information from Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports to predict local fiscal sustainability status. The results of econometric models suggest that pension liability funding is most affected by the size of government, debt burden is most strongly associated with the size of local economic base; and budgetary balance is influenced by the degree of local own-source revenue diversification. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Public Administration 2013

Generational Accounting (GA), developed by Auerbach. Gokhale and Kotlikoff (1991) is an alternative and dynamic method employed in measuring the impact of existing fiscal policies on current and future generations. The method is based on the government&rsquo / s intertemporal budget constraint which principally requires that the present value of current and future generations&rsquo / net tax payments plus the existing net wealth be sufficient enough to cover for government&rsquo / s future consumption. In contrast to the traditional and static measures of fiscal sustainability, GA method reveals the intergenerational distribution of tax burden and helps identifying the policies that can alleviate the generational imbalance. This paper constructs and presents the first set of generational accounts for Turkey in an attempt to measure the generational gap and compare the Turkish intergenerational fiscal outlook to a number of developed and developing countries.

Due to widespread decentralization of spending responsibilities, increasing revenue power and borrowing capacity of sub-national governments, sub-national borrowing has become an increasingly important source of sub-national finance. While there are arguments for and against giving sub-national authorities room for raising their own financial resources, appropriate sub-national borrowing regulatory framework can reduce chances of defaults and fiscal crises. This dissertation investigates the effectiveness of sub-national borrowing regulations in maintaining fiscal sustainability. More precisely, it tests the hypothesis that is sub-national borrowing is restricted to financing capital investments (the “golden rule”), and if the sub-national governments are provided with some measure of revenue autonomy, then the sub-national borrowing should not endanger fiscal sustainability. Based on the sub-national government panel data for 57 countries between 1990 and 2008 and applying the system GMM estimator and the survival analysis, this dissertation provides support for this hypothesis. The results suggest that the “golden rule” is effective in maintaining fiscal sustainability at both general and sub-national government level. Sub-national tax autonomy, however, seems to have positive but very small marginal effect on fiscal sustainability. The obtained results also emphasize the risk of the soft budget constraint and the moral hazard. Significant central government financing may give encouraging signs to the sub-national governments to over-borrow and to expect being bailed out by the central government. The results obtained in this dissertation imply following policy recommendations. First, sub-national government borrowing does not have to endanger fiscal sustainability if the borrowing regulation framework is well designed and according to specific country circumstances. Second, reducing fiscal dependence on central government financing reduces the risk of moral hazard and improves the effectiveness of borrowing control in maintaining fiscal balance at the sustainable level.

This work explores the relationship between municipal government debt and revenue diversification using a prism of institutional and fiscal interactions, concentrating on revenue fungibility effects over time and on the role of state-imposed constraints. A diversified revenue structure tends to stabilize revenue levels by balancing income-elastic and inelastic revenue sources. The impact of such diversity has been the subject of much research on expenditure and service levels among state and local governments. Considerably less research has been conducted on its potential relationship with debt, although capital financing is a necessary and often-utilized mechanism for funding capital and operational spending for local governments. Since it is well known that debt payments are fixed in the short run, they require sufficient revenue adequacy through economic highs and lows. It is thus argued that local governments with more diversified revenue structures are better able to utilize debt financing since revenue diversity mitigates the risk of borrowing by providing for greater fiscal predictability in the long run. This hypothesis is tested on two samples - a large sample of cities in Massachusetts from 2000 through 2009, as well as a cross-state sample, encompassing the cities from the majority of U.S. states. The findings of both studies provide preliminary evidence on the influence of revenue diversification on the levels of municipal indebtedness. While the Massachusetts study reveals that revenue diversification is, indeed, a statistically significant determinant of debt per capita, which also has an indirect effect on property tax burdens, the cross-state study suggests that revenue diversification has a mitigating impact on certain state-imposed fiscal rules, further adding to its weight as a strategic financial management tool. Both studies also reiterate the importance of such fiscal capacity factors as fund balances, intergovernmental revenue, and the size of government, while also revealing some new interaction patterns among various state-imposed debt limitations.

This dissertation explores how cities achieve fiscal sustainability—the financial capacity to consistently meet basic public service responsibilities regardless of economic conditions. Two research questions arise from the interplay between the local economy and fiscal sustainability. First, what management tools do cities use to achieve fiscal sustainability given that economic conditions are largely outside their control? Second, what explains the variation among cities in the financial management tools used to achieve fiscal sustainability? The financial management tools of interest in this study are revenue diversity and the size of the fund balance. It is conjectured that financial management tools interact with each other prompting the tools to function as policy substitutes for each other. Cities achieve fiscal sustainability by strategically choosing budget-balancing tools appropriate to their economic conditions. The study utilizes a cross-state comparison from 351 Massachusetts municipal governments using panel data from 2000 to 2009 and 993 New York municipal governments using panel data from 2001 to 2010. Using theories of fiscal sustainability and revenue diversification, several models are proposed that test the interactive effects of fund balance size and revenue diversity on fiscal sustainability. The results from the empirical analyses show that cities use various financial management tools to stabilize spending during economic downturns. Cities pursue strategies that help maintain fiscal sustainability. Furthermore, it is discovered that interaction of fund balance and revenue diversity on municipal expenditures is stronger as the level of revenue diversity decreases. This interaction has a large effect during periods of economic downturns as compared to periods of economic growth.

Made available in DSpace on 2015-03-05T18:57:20Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 10 / Nenhuma / Um evento econômico que os formuladores de política têm enfrentado nas últimas décadas na América Latina é a questão do comportamento fiscal dos governos e a conseqüente (in)sustentabilidade da dívida pública e os seus efeitos sobre a economia. O fato é que a dívida dos governos aumentou exponencialmente em inúmeros países latino-americanos, tornando-se algumas vezes insustentável no curto prazo e conduzindo-os a uma série de defaults. Portanto, a política fiscal desempenha um papel relevante no processo de estabilização macroeconômica e nos ciclos econômicos. Dentro desse contexto, o presente estudo tem como objetivo geral avaliar a sustentabilidade da política fiscal para sete países latino-americanos utilizando um modelo de multicointegração, primeiramente apresentado por Granger e Lee (1989 e 1990) e, posteriormente, desenvolvido por Engsted, Gonzalo e Haldrup (1997), Haldrup (1998) e Leachman et al. (2005). O modelo apresenta uma série de critérios para verificar a existência de uma relação de multicoint / An economical event that the policymakers have been facing in the last decades, in Latin America, is the subject of the government's fiscal behavior and the consequent (un)sustainability of the public debt and your effects about the economy. The fact is that the government's debt increased exponentially at countless American Latin countries, becoming sometimes unsustainable in the short period, leading them to a defaults series. Therefore, the fiscal policy plays an important rule on the macroeconomic stabilization and on the economical cycles. Inside of this context, the present study has as general objective to evaluate the sustainability of fiscal policy of seven Latin America countries using the multicointegration methodology first apresented in Granger and Lee (1989, 1990) and, further, developed by Engsted, Gonzalo and Haldrup (1997) and Haldrup (1998) and Leachman et al (2005). The model presents a series of criterions to verify the existence of a multicointegration relationship among the receipts, sp

Due to widespread decentralization of spending responsibilities, increasing revenue power and borrowing capacity of sub-national governments, sub-national borrowing has become an increasingly important source of sub-national finance. While there are arguments for and against giving sub-national authorities room for raising their own financial resources, appropriate sub-national borrowing regulatory framework can reduce chances of defaults and fiscal crises. This dissertation investigates the effectiveness of sub-national borrowing regulations in maintaining fiscal sustainability. More precisely, it tests the hypothesis that is sub-national borrowing is restricted to financing capital investments (the “golden rule”), and if the sub-national governments are provided with some measure of revenue autonomy, then the sub-national borrowing should not endanger fiscal sustainability. Based on the sub-national government panel data for 57 countries between 1990 and 2008 and applying the system GMM estimator and the survival analysis, this dissertation provides support for this hypothesis. The results suggest that the “golden rule” is effective in maintaining fiscal sustainability at both general and sub-national government level. Sub-national tax autonomy, however, seems to have positive but very small marginal effect on fiscal sustainability. The obtained results also emphasize the risk of the soft budget constraint and the moral hazard. Significant central government financing may give encouraging signs to the sub-national governments to over-borrow and to expect being bailed out by the central government. The results obtained in this dissertation imply following policy recommendations. First, sub-national government borrowing does not have to endanger fiscal sustainability if the borrowing regulation framework is well designed and according to specific country circumstances. Second, reducing fiscal dependence on central government financing reduces the risk of moral hazard and improves the effectiveness of borrowing control in maintaining fiscal balance at the sustainable level.

Usually people believe that domestic debt in Chinese compare with the GDP is very less, so in this way the government had the ability to issue more treasury bond. So in 1988, when Chinese implement the Rehabilitation of bank balance sheet, in order to write-off state-owned commerce banks system non-performing loan, it uses treasury bond to accumulate capital. Whereas, this kind of implementation does not consider Chinese future financial ability and invisible debt keep soaring, including state-owned enterprises non-performing loan, the debt of the state-owned policy banks. Some scholar also express pessimism, they assume if the government debt continue to increase, this will have a high financial risk resulting in Chinese Economic collapse. So, in calculating the Chinese government debt cause by the state-own financial institution, not only do we consider the figure provided by the Chinese official, but also have to add the Central Government invisible debt. This research is based on time series model in calculating year 2008 Chinese government debt, with Revenue Enhancement, commercial bank behavior and the above two financial policy in making evaluation. Notice: 2008 treasury bond in whatever policy measure is still higher than 60% Basle standard. This implies that in the near future the Chinese will not be able to withstand the huge treasury bond. Simultaneously, this manifest Chinese government debt have been underestimated, and falsely believe it can have the ability to be in the state of solvency, this lead to government continuous issuing of treasury bond. This will hamper the Chinese financial structure. As for the government debt, it only depends on Revenue Enhancement, that is control deficit rate which cannot solve the huge government debt. However, solving the government debt problem, not only with the measure of issuing treasury bond, this will result in raising the debt with the debt. The best method will be to pass resolution in all ways, slowly and steadily in writing off the debt. In this way it can lead Chinese to a Fiscal Sustainability result.

The aim of this thesis is to identify and assess the reasons of the Turkish financial crises based on various crises model explanations including the first, the second and the third generation models. It is argued that following factors played a crucial role in triggering crises in Turkey. Firstly, under the weak sustainable fiscal policies, implementation of the exchange rate based stabilization program caused the increase in vulnerabilities in the sectoral balance sheets and thus increased the prospective deficit considerations. Secondly, as seen on the international evidence, over-appreciation of the domestic currency put pressure on the current account deficit and other macroeconomic indicators. Thirdly, domestic and external factors also worsen the perceptions on the sustainability of the disinflation program leading to sharp capital outflows. Within this context, fiscal and current account sustainability are empirically tested under the light of the structural break analysis and it is found that fiscal stance and the current account deficit are both weakly sustainable implying the necessity of policy regime changes before the crises period. Having assessed the structural problems of the government, corporate and banking sector&rsquo / s balance sheets, intersectoral risk matrix was constructed to analyze the risk accumulation in the sectors considering the impacts of the exchange rate based disinflation program and the ongoing economic imbalances. Both mismanagement of the risks and the structural weaknesses of some banks led to the deterioration of the expectations about the continuity of the program, by increasing tensions and prospective deficit perceptions in the markets. With speculative attacks, a sharp capital outflow was triggered the crises. It is concluded that the causes of the 2000-2001 Turkish financial crises can be interpreted as an example of financial crises model encompassing all elements of the earlier models except seignorage issues.

The U.S. social security system faces funding pressure due to the aging of the population. This dissertation examines the welfare cost of social security reform and social security policy uncertainty under rational expectations and under learning. I provide an overview of the U.S. social security system in Chapter I. In Chapter II, I construct an analytically tractable two-period OLG model with capital, social security, and endogenous government debt. I demonstrate the existence of steady states depends on social security parameters. I demonstrate a saddle-node bifurcation of steady states numerically, and demonstrate a transcritical bifurcation analytically. I show that if a proposed social security reform is large enough, or if the probability of reform is high enough, the economy will converge to a steady state. In Chapter III, I develop a three-period lifecycle model. The model is inherently forward looking, which allows for more interesting policy analysis. With three periods, the young worker's saving-consumption decision depends on her expectation of future capital. This forward looking allows analysis of multi-period uncertainty. Analysis in the three-period model suggests that policy uncertainty may have lasting consequences, even after reform is enacted. In Chapter IV, I develop two theories of bounded rationality called life-cycle horizon learning and finite horizon life-cycle learning. In both models, agents use adaptive expectations to forecast future aggregates, such as wages and interest rates. This adaptive learning feature introduces cyclical dynamics along a transition path, which magnify the welfare cost of changes in policy and policy uncertainty. I model policy uncertainty as a stochastic process in which reform takes place in one of two periods as either a benefit cut or a tax increase. I find the welfare cost of this policy uncertainty is less than 0.25% of period consumption in a standard, rational expectations framework. The welfare cost of policy uncertainty is larger in the learning models; the worst-off cohort in the life-cycle horizon learning model would be willing to give up 1.98% of period consumption to avoid policy uncertainty.