Investigating the sustainability of the government's financial balance in Iran's economy: an application of the Self-Exciting Threshold Autoregressive model
Subject Areas :
Fatemeh Homayooni
1
,
Davoud Mahmoudinia
2
1 - Vali-e-Asr university of Rafsanjan
2 - Vali-e-Asr University Of Rafsanjan
Keywords: Keywords: financial sustainability, government debt, budget deficit, financial balance, Ponzi game, SETAR model.,
Abstract :
Davoud Mahmoudinia Fateme Hoomayoni Kholari Abstract If the government becomes a permanent borrower to cover its budget deficit and always finances the old loan with a new loan, it enters the Ponzi game. In fact, the accumulation of budget deficit leads to more government debt to the point where a debt crisis is formed and the government is unable to meet its expenses; Therefore, financial sustainability refers to the concept of "debt and its sustainability". In order to prevent such situations, the financial policy should be adjusted in such a way as to provide the possibility of repaying the government's debt; It means to be sustainable. In this research, the estimation of the financial balance function of the government of Iran in sustainable and unsustainable financial regimes in the form of SETAR model during the years 1971 to 2020 has been done. For this purpose, the financial balance was estimated as a dependent variable and according to the common approach in assessing financial sustainability, the ratio of debt to GDP of the previous period was used as the determining factor of the regime. The results of five different fits within the framework of the SETAR model showed that the debt-to-GDP ratio variable as a "threshold variable" has a negative effect on the financial balance; While the non-threshold variable of GDP growth has had a positive effect on the financial balance during the regimes. Also, the absolute value of the first lag coefficient of the debt-to-GDP ratio variable is significantly higher in the unsustainable regime than in the sustainable regime. Another important result is that a high financial balance does not necessarily mean the sustainability of financial policies.