Thesis (MPA)--Stellenbosch University, 2000. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This theoretically guided qualitative and quantitative study aims at investigating the extent to which centralization of fiscal powers in the Namibian State has been detrimental to development activities of the Okavango Regional Council. A further aim is to make recommendations and suggest balanced inter-governmental fiscal relations between central and regional governments in Namibia. The significance" of this study lies in the fact that, since the abolition of homelands in Namibia by the incumbent goven:rrnent in the 1990s, no comprehensive study has been carried out to analyze the socio-economic implications of such centralization of powers by central government. The study demonstrates that the degree of autonomy afforded to regional governments in Namibia stagnates their role as socio-economic development agents/facilitators. The study also examines the causes of disparities between centnil and regional governments. Important among the causes is the legal framework, which does not specify a fixed sharing formula. A number of corrective measures are suggested by the study. Among these measures are the decentralisation of functions that can be efficiently performed by regional governments, assignment of taxes to regional governments and amendment of existing legislation to allow for a balanced inter-governmental relations policy. The study further suggests that decentralization of functions to regions needs to be carefully planned and implemented because to lack of resource endowment and experienced personnel in the regions. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Hierdie teoreties-gefundeerde kwalitatiewe en kwantitatiewe studie is daarop gemik om te bepaal tot watter mate die sentralisering van fiskale magte in die Namibiese regering 'n nadelige effek op die ontwikkelings-aktiwiteite van die Okavango Streeksraad gehad het. Nog 'n doelwit (van die studie) is om aanbevelings en voorstelle te maak vir die daarstelling van gebalanseerde inter-regeringsverhoudings tussen sentrale- en streeksowerhede in Namibië. Die waarde van hierdie studie lê in die feit dat, sedert die afskaffing van tuislande in Namibië deur die huidge regering in die 1990s, geen omvattende ondersoek nog gedoen is om die sosio-ekonomiese implikasies van so 'n sentralisering van magte deur die sentrale regering te ontleed nie. Die studie dui aan dat die mate van selfbestuur wat aan streeksowerhede in Namibië toegeken is, hulle rol as die agente/fasiliteersders van sosio-ekonomiese ontwikkeling kniehalter. Die studie ondersoek ook die oorsake van die verskille wat tans tussen sentrale- en streeksowerehede bestaan. Een van die hoofredes hiervoor blyk te wees die feit dat die bestaande resraamwerk/statutêre nie 'n vaste formule (vir die deling van mag) bepaal nie. 'n Aantal korrektiewe maatreëls word deur die studie aan die hand gedoen. Die aanbevelings sluit onder andere in maatreëls om dié funskies te densentraliseer wat effektief deur streeksowerhede gedoen kan word, die toekenning van belasting aan streeksowerhede en die wysiging van bestaande wetgewing om voorsiening te maak vir 'n gebalanseerde interregeringsverhoudingsbeleid. Die studie beveel verder aan dat die desentralisering van funkies na streke noukeurig beplan en geimplementeer moet word in die lig van 'n gebrek aan middele en ervare personneel in die streke.

Negli ultimi dieci anni siamo stati testimoni di una delle più grandi crisi che il mondo ha visto. Il lavoro dei macroeconomisti è diventato più attivo, nell'urgenza di trovare la via d'uscita, molti degli strumenti applicati per la professione di economista sono stati rispolverati ed aggiornati per le nuove esigenze della crisi economica. Tra gli strumenti per la ricerca economica c'è lo modello dinamico stocastico di equilibrio generale (DSGE). Questa tesi è composta da quattro capitoli che coinvolgono l'intermediazione e/o politiche condotte dai governi o banche centrali finanziarie. I primi tre capitoli partono sul modello DSGE mentre l' ultimo su un modello macroeconomico principale-agente. Il primo (scritto come una rassegna delle principali indagini in DSGE) trata dei cicli di credito, di acceleratori finanziari, del mercato immobiliare, del settore bancario, dell'assunzione dei rischi e delle politiche monetarie. Il secondo analizza l'impatto delle variazioni tra il rapporto di leva e le riserve necessarie all'interno, che al giorno d'oggi regolano alcune delle politiche popolari. Il terzo capitolo incorpora un mercato dei prestiti interbancari per l'analisi degli shock di rischio generato nel settore bancario e come si sviluppa l'economia. Il quarto invece è un'indagine che si scosta dal modello macroeconomico principale-agente; comprende un governo attivo con le tasse e sussidi di disoccupazione. / During the last decade we were witness of one of the biggest crises that the world has seen. The job of the macroeconomists became more active, in the urgency for finding the way out; many of the tools applied for the economist profession were dusted off and updated for the new needs of the economic crisis. Among the tools for economic research there is the Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium Model (DSGE). This dissertation consists of four chapters involved in financial intermediation and/or policies conducted by the governments or central banks. The first three chapters depart from the DSGE model while the last is a macroeconomic agent based model. The first, written as a review of the main investigations in the DSGE, covers several fields as credit cycles, financial accelerator, housing market, banking sector, risk taking and monetary policies. The second chapter analyses the impacts of changes in the leverage ratio and the required reserves within, some of the popular regulation policies nowadays. The third chapter incorporates an interbank lending market for the analysis of risk shocks generated in the banking sector and how it is spread to the economy. The fourth chapter is an investigation that departs from the macroeconomic agent based model; it incorporates an active government with taxes and unemployment subsidies.

This thesis consists of three essays concerned with endogenous fiscal policy and its interaction with political economy constraints. The first essay presented in Chapter 2 examines the cyclical behavior of endogenous government consumption over the business cycle absent a commitment mechanism in a neoclassical economy with Total Factor Productivity (TFP) shocks and investment shocks. Tax rates that finance public consumption are chosen in a time consistent way in a dynamic game between the government and a representative agent that values public goods in his utility. It is found that government consumption set without commitment behaves procyclical in response to the mentioned shocks. The government-consumption-output ratio is mildly procyclical or countercyclical depending on the selected calibration. Particularly, the elasticity of substitution between private and public goods plays an important role. The second essay showed in Chapter 3 extends the model studied in Chapter 2 adding agent heterogeneity in wealth and labor productivity. The aim of this study is to identify how policy outcomes are affected by inequality of households, particularly the median voter's choice of tax rates that finance public goods. For a standard RBC calibration to the U.S. economy the result is a strong procyclical comovement of public consumption with output, and a relatively weak procyclical comovement of the output share of public consumption with output, that becomes stronger with rising inequality. The politico-economic channel induces causality from output to lagged tax rates, therefore after a Hicks neutral productivity shock the median voter tries to delay the increase in the tax rate, such that the increment will take place just after the accumulation of more capital. In the case of equal agents the response is to decrease the tax rate in the first year after the shock. Additionally, the model predicts that the size of government consumption decreases with inequality. The last essay in Chapter 4 presents a stylized model of external sovereign debt that incorporates corruption in the form of rent-seeking groups by which the choice to cooperate or non-cooperate in providing public goods, in extracting rents and in issuing debt, is endogenized. More than one rent-seeking group originates a "tragedy of the commons" over fiscal resources that make the borrower economy to show collective fiscal impatience. External creditors envision that impatience and require higher interest rates for buying bonds, exacerbating the problem of high debt. The high level of interest rates decreases the wealth of the country and endangers its ability to repay the debt. We show that bailout plans, defined as temporary loans with lower than market level interest rates, are not effective in such economies.

This thesis aims to provide new and useful insights into the effects that various tax, labour and product market reforms have on the overall economic performance. Additionally, it aims also to provide insights about the optimal monetary and fiscal policy behaviour within the economy characterized with various real labour market frictions. We analyze the benefits of tax reforms and their effectiveness relative to product or other labour market reforms. A general equilibrium model with imperfect competition, wage bargaining and different forms of tax distortions is applied in order to analyze these issues. We find that structural reforms imply short run costs but long run gains; that the long run gains outweigh the short run costs; and that the financing of such reforms will be the main stumbling block. We also find that the effectiveness of various reform instruments depends on the policy maker's ultimate objective. More precisely, tax reforms are more effective for welfare gains, but market liberalization is more valuable for generating employment. In order to advance our understanding of the tax and product market reform processes, we then develop a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model which incorporates search-matching frictions, costly ring and endogenous job destruction decisions, as well as a distortionary progressive wage and a at payroll tax. We confirm the negative effects of marginal tax distortions on the overall economic performance. We also find a positive effect of an increase in the wage tax progressivity and product market liberalization on employment, output and consumption. Following a positive technology shock, the volatility of employment, output and consumption turns out to be lower in the reformed economy, whereas the impact effect on inflation is more pronounced. Following a positive government spending shock the volatility of employment, output and consumption is again lower in the reformed economy, but the inflation response is stronger over the whole adjustment path. We also find detrimental effects on employment and output of a tax reform which keeps the marginal tax wedge unchanged by partially offsetting a decrease in the payroll tax by an increase in the wage tax rate. If this reform is anticipated one period in advance the negative effects remain all over the transition path. We investigate the optimal monetary and fiscal policy implication of the New-Keynesian setup enriched with search-matching frictions. We show that the optimal policy features deviation from strict price stability, and that the Ramsey planner uses both inflation and taxes in order to fully exploit the benefits of the productivity increase following a positive productivity shock. We also find that the optimal tax rate and government liabilities inherit the time series properties of the underlying shocks. Moreover, we identify a certain degree of overshooting in inflation and tax rates following a positive productivity shock, and a certain degree of undershooting following a positive government spending shock as a consequence of the assumed commitment of policy maker.

The subject of the diploma paper/dissertation "Fiscal policy of Ukraine" is the analysis of the development of fiscal policy of Ukraine and its influence on the economical situation of the state. At the beginning, in the first part, we briefly define fiscal policy, its goals, functions, forms and tools. The diploma paper then characterizes the budgetary scale of Ukraine focusing on the separate items of the state budget. In the last part, the experiental one, we analyse the periods of the development of fiscal policy in Ukraine from the year 1991 and the influence of the main measures of the Ukrainian government on the macroeconomical indices.

This thesis deals with the problem of public debt within the G-20 countries and the Czech Republic. The current state of public finances in these countries was analyzed through the so called Public Finance Checklist, which has been specifically developed for this thesis. The Checklist includes some public sector liabilities that are not a part of the conventional analysis of public sector debt. The results of analysis show that hidden liabilities constitute a significant part of the total amount of public debt in the analyzed countries. This fact presents a threat to stability of public finances. While the total public debt is increasing, governments aim to optically decrease the level of debt. The author assumes that the reason for such behavior is the arrangement of political system with missing corrective mechanisms of the principal-agent problem and moral hazard put into effect by political representatives. At the end of the thesis the author suggests some methods to fix the problems and restrict the growth of public debt.

The thesis deals with monitoring and analysis of the economic cycle in Slovakia between 1993 - 2009. Its aim was to assess the impact of fiscal and monetary policies on the economic cycle. Both policies should cooperate with each other and create a favorable environment for economic development. The goal of the monetary policy should be securing currency stability. The fiscal policy should aim for stable development in public finance. The thesis consists of five parts, which intersect each other. The first part explains the theoretical foundations of the economic cycles. It is followed by a chapter, in which different Slovak economy phases of the economic cycle are analyzed, with the help of indicators of internal and external balance, demand and supply side of GDP and indicators of monetary conditions. Work also includes an assessment of Slovakia's entry into the EMU in terms of revenues and expenses. This part is also focused on the process of nominal and real convergence of the Slovak economy before adopting Euro. The penultimate part of this thesis deals with a comparison of business cycles of V4 countries. The conclusion is focused on forecasting the economic development of the Slovak economy in 2011.

Esta dissertação analisa a sustentabilidade da dívida pública brasileira utilizando a metodologia proposta por Bohn (1998, 2008), levando em consideração as operações de contabilidade criativa e os empréstimos do governo federal para bancos públicos, principalmente BNDES. Para isso, utilizam-se diversos conceitos de superávit primário (oficial; oficial excluindo as receitas de contabilidade criativa; e permanente) e de endividamento (dívidas líquida, bruta e bruta excluídas reservas internacionais), para o período de 2003 a 2014. Em todos os casos analisados, a hipótese de sustentabilidade não foi satisfeita, logo há a necessidade de se alterar a política fiscal do país. Foram realizados testes de quebra estrutural seguindo a metodologia de Bai e Perron (1998), nos quais se verificou que a alteração no padrão da política fiscal pós-crise de 2008 foi um dos principais responsáveis pelo resultado de não sustentabilidade. Verificou-se também que, para esse período pós-crise, o cumprimento da meta do superávit primário se deveu, em grande parte, às receitas de concessões, refinanciamentos (Refis) e dividendos, com destaque para BNDES e Caixa Econômica Federal. / This dissertation analyses the sustainability of Brazil\'s public debt using the methodology proposed by Bohn (1998, 2008), taking into consideration creative accounting and loans from the federal government to public banks, especially BNDES. To this end, various concepts of primary surplus (official; official excluding revenues from creative accounting; and structural) and debt (net debt; gross debt; and gross debt excluding international reserves) are used, from 2003 to 2014. For all the scenarios the hypothesis of fiscal sustainability was not satisfied, and therefore the government would have to change the fiscal policy in Brazil. Structural break tests were performed following the methodology of Bai and Perron (1998), in which was found that the change in fiscal policy post-crisis of 2008 was one of the major factors on the results of non-sustainability. It was found that, for this post-crisis period, the fulfillment of the primary surplus target was mostly due to concession revenues, refinancing (Refis) and dividends, highlighting BNDES and Caixa Econômica Federal.

Este trabalho tem como objetivo testar a hipótese de dominância fiscal, bem como estimar uma regra de reação fiscal para o Brasil, e é desenvolvido em duas partes. Na primeira parte investiga-se a existência de dominância fiscal no Brasil a partir de 1999 ? ano em que se inicia a fixação de metas de superávit primário pelo governo ? através de função resposta ao impulso. O resultado obtido indica que não ocorre o fenômeno da dominância fiscal no período analisado. Na segunda parte analisa-se se o comportamento da autoridade fiscal do Brasil pauta-se em alguma regra de reação fiscal. Pretende-se aferir se o governo reage a variações no nível da dívida ajustando o resultado primário, de modo a garantir a sustentabilidade da razão dívida/PIB e permitir que a política monetária seja eficaz. Para o período anterior à fixação de metas de superávit primário (1995-1998) não é possível definir uma regra de reação fiscal, pois o superávit primário não responde a mudanças na dívida pública. Para o período posterior (1999-2006), entretanto, conclui-se que o governo segue uma regra de reação fiscal, denotando preocupação em evitar a dominância fiscal, embora a especificação da regra seja distinta para os governos Fernando Henrique Cardoso e Lula. / This research, which is divided into two parts, tests the hypothesis of fiscal dominance and estimates a fiscal reaction rule for Brazil. In the first part we investigate the existence of fiscal dominance in Brazil beginning 1999 ? the starting point of primary surplus targets by the Government ? through an impulse response function. Our analysis indicates that the fiscal dominance does not apply for the concerned period. In the second part, we investigate if the Brazilian fiscal authority follows any rule of fiscal reaction. We intent to test if the Government reacts adjusting the primary surplus to debt variations, maintaining the sustainability of the debt/GDP ratio and preserving the efficacy of the monetary policy. For the period prior to the primary surplus targets (1995-1998), it?s not possible to define a rule of fiscal reaction, as the primary surplus does not respond to variations in the public debt. However, for the 1999-2006 period, we found that the Government does follow a fiscal reaction rule, highlighting the preoccupation of avoiding the fiscal dominance, even though the rule?s specification is distinct for the mandates of Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Lula.

O objetivo deste trabalho é investigar se os multiplicadores de gastos do governo diferem de acordo com o estado do ciclo de negócios para o período 1999: I- 2016: II. Para tanto é utilizado o Método de Projeção Local de Jordà para estimar as funções resposta ao impulso e os multiplicadores fiscais sob dois regimes diferentes: recessão e expansão. Para definir os diferentes regimes foram utilizadas as variáveis comumente usadas na literatura (o hiato do produto, o nível de utilização da capacidade instalada, a taxa de crescimento do PIB, a taxa de desemprego), além da datação oficial de ciclos do CODACE. A estimação do modelo não linear resulta em multiplicadores de gastos do governo, após um e dois anos, maiores nos períodos de recessão do que nos períodos de expansão, independentemente da variável escolhida para diferenciar os regimes. Porém, os multiplicadores obtidos não parecem ser diferentes estatisticamente entre os regimes. Infelizmente, como observado por Ramey e Zubairy (2017) a existência de séries históricas é fundamental para a estimação dos multiplicadores fiscais e sua ausência para a economia brasileira limita muito o que é possível dizer sobre o assunto / This paper aims to investigate whether government spending multipliers are different according to the state of the business cycle for the Brazilian economy during the period 1999:I-2016:II. In order to do so we use Jordà\'s Local Projection Method to estimate impulse response functions and fiscal multipliers under two different regimes: recession and expansion. To define the different regimes we use several variables commonly used in the literature: the output gap, the capacity utilization level, the GDP growth rate, the unemployment rate and CODACE. The nonlinear model estimations result in larger multipliers, after one and two years, in periods of economic recession than in periods of economic expansion, regardless of the variable chosen to differentiate regimes. However, the multipliers do not seem to be statistically different between regimes. Unfortunately, as observed by Ramey and Zubairy (2017), long historical series are fundamental for the adequate estimation of fiscal multipliers and their absence for the Brazilian economy does not allow anyone to say much about the subject.