Correcting 'Beyond the Cycle" : Accounting for Asset Prices in Structural Fiscal Balances /

This paper outlines an operational approach for incorporating the impact of asset price cycles in the calculation of structural fiscal balances (SFBs). The global financial crisis demonstrated that movements in asset prices can have an important fiscal impact. Failing to account for the fiscal impac...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Liu, Estelle
Other Authors: Mattina, Todd, Poghosyan, Tigran
Format: Journal
Language:English
Published: Washington, D.C. : International Monetary Fund, 2015.
Series:IMF Working Papers; Working Paper ; No. 2015/109
Online Access:Full text available on IMF
Description
Summary:This paper outlines an operational approach for incorporating the impact of asset price cycles in the calculation of structural fiscal balances (SFBs). The global financial crisis demonstrated that movements in asset prices can have an important fiscal impact. Failing to account for the fiscal impact of asset price cycles can encourage a pro-cyclical policy stance if temporarily high revenues are passed through into expenditures. In addition, over-estimating the SFB may lead to inadequate fiscal buffers when cyclical revenues eventually dissipate. The paper proposes an empirical approach to correct for asset prices and provides illustrative country results for selected OECD countries. We find that asset price cycles are imperfectly synchronized with the business cycle and are quantitatively significant with an average pre-crisis fiscal impact ranging from about 1\2 to 2 percent of GDP in the sample. For a number of countries, the pre-crisis fiscal impact of high asset prices was larger at about 4 percent of GDP.
Item Description:<strong>Off-Campus Access:</strong> No User ID or Password Required
<strong>On-Campus Access:</strong> No User ID or Password Required
Physical Description:1 online resource (36 pages)
Format:Mode of access: Internet
ISSN:1018-5941
Access:Electronic access restricted to authorized BRAC University faculty, staff and students