Assessing fiscal sustainability in Egypt: a comparative study

PurposeThis paper aims to assess the fiscal sustainability in Egypt during the period 1990–2018 using deficit accounts (DA) approach. It also tries to investigate the possibility of applying generational accounts (GA) in Egypt as a new approach to assess fiscal sustainability.Design/methodology/approachThis paper tries to assess fiscal sustainability in Egypt during 1990–2018 using DA and GA approaches. DA approach includes primary deficit indicator, tax gap indicator, augmented Dickey-Fuller stationarity test for debt/GDP ratio and Johansen co-integration test between government revenues and expenditures. However, concerning the possibility of applying GA in Egypt, field study form was designed including specific questions to academic and executive economic experts to investigate if it is possible to apply GA in Egypt.FindingsThe empirical findings of the field study indicate that Egypt witnessed fiscal sustainability during the period 1990–2018 using DA. On the other hand, there are various obstacles, including administrative, technical, legal and political obstacles which hinder Egypt from applying GA to assess fiscal sustainability.Originality/valueTo the best of the authors' knowledge, this paper assesses fiscal sustainability in Egypt using DA for a longer and updated time series within 1990–2018. In addition, it is the first paper to examine the possibility of assessing fiscal sustainability using GA approach in Egypt.

Introduction

This introductory chapter sets the context for the book, situating it in the larger National Study of Youth and Religion as the final overview book of the project, taking into account all four waves of data collection, from 2002 to 2013. The chapter lays out the basic “emerging adults” frame for understanding the stage in life of the young people in the study in Wave 4 and differentiates the book from the popular “generational” accounts such as “millennial” and other generational labels. Finally, the chapter provides a road map for each of the chapters to follow, giving a brief description of what each chapter includes and previewing the major findings of the book.

Generational accounts and demographic dividend in Russia

The paper presents a modern methodology for estimating the impact of different age groups on the production and distribution of national income, called national transfer (generational) accounts. The human economic lifecycle is divided into stages defined by the ratio of labour income to consumption. In middle ages, gained income is higher than current consumption. The resulting surplus of resources is supposed to cover the income deficit in older and younger age groups. Estimates of the deficit or surplus at different ages are made for the Russian population for 2013 based on the results of age profiles taken from administrative sources and surveys. In the paper we also estimate the projected changes in the lifecycle deficit under different demographic development scenarios. Age profiles of labour income and consumption are used to calculate the effective economic support and the influence of demographic changes in Russia on economic growth rates in the near future.

Konjunktur und Generationenbilanz – eine Analyse anhand des HP-Filters / Business Cycle Effects on Generational Accounting – An Analysis using the HP-Filter

SummaryGenerational accounting is - given the future demographic developments in OECD countries - an established tool to quantify the fiscal situation of public coffers. However, as all economic methods dealing with future developments it has critical points. One in particular is the calibration on one base year which neglects business cycle effects on the generational accounts. This paper aims to analyze in which way and to which degree generational accounts and the associated sustainability indicators are biased due to the neglecting of business cycle effects. To do this we use the Hodrick-Prescott-Filter to estimate the business cycle effects for the German general government budgets from 1996 to 2005. We then calculate sustainability indicators based on all years given the actual and the business cycle adjusted budgets. It can be stated that the neglect of the business cycle definitively has an effect on the outcomes of the generational accounting framework. However the magnitude of this effect is rather small, at least for Germany. As a by-product of our analysis, we show that the German fiscal policy was rather pro-cyclical during the examined time frame and that the effects of these policies on the generational accounts are larger than the business cycle effects.