IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ibn/ibrjnl/v15y2022i3p61.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

On the Sustainability of Fiscal Policy in Sierra Leone

Author

Listed:
  • Samuel Bonzu

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to empirically investigates whether Sierra Leone fiscal policy is sustainable. In this regard, I employ different econometric methodologies used in the empirical literature to investigates the sustainability of fiscal policy. The empirical findings that emerged from this study are useful on one hand to creditors, serving as a guide for lending to the government, and, on the other hand to the government, cautioning policymakers to avoid public debt from exploding that could possibly lead to fiscal insolvency and/or debt distress. I start by testing for the stationarity properties of the primary balance, the necessary condition for a sustainable fiscal policy. The findings indicated that Sierra Leone fiscal policy is sustainable under the review period. Next, I test for cointegration relationship between government revenue and government expenditure, the alternative approach to test for a sustainable fiscal policy. On this note, I employ both the Dynamic Ordinary Least Square (DOLS) and the Johansen cointegration techniques. Both approaches confirmed the existence of a cointegration relationship between government revenue and government expenditure. The estimated cointegration coefficients show that fiscal policy during the review period is weakly sustainable and the cointegration between government spending and revenue is positive (but less than one) and statistically significant. This implies that for each percentage point of GDP increase in government expenditure, government revenues increase by less than one percentage point of GDP. Additionally, I proceeded to endogenously account for structural breaks in the cointegration relationship, which is relevant for Sierra Leone, a country that has witnessed significant changes over the years, including the Structural Adjustments Programme (SAP) in the 1980s, tax reforms in the 1990s and 2000s, etc. I found evidence of a significant structural break occurring in 1984. There also exists uni-directional causality running from government revenue to government expenditure. This causality result is in line with the tax-and-spend hypothesis as proposed by Friedman (1978).Finally, I estimate an error correction model and the error correction term shows that the speed of adjustment from the expenditure side works faster than that of the revenue side to correct the fiscal disequilibrium.

Suggested Citation

  • Samuel Bonzu, 2022. "On the Sustainability of Fiscal Policy in Sierra Leone," International Business Research, Canadian Center of Science and Education, vol. 15(3), pages 1-61, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:ibn:ibrjnl:v:15:y:2022:i:3:p:61
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ccsenet.org/journal/index.php/ibr/article/download/0/0/46802/50067
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://ccsenet.org/journal/index.php/ibr/article/view/0/46802
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Schwert, G William, 2002. "Tests for Unit Roots: A Monte Carlo Investigation," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 20(1), pages 5-17, January.
    2. Helmut Lütkepohl & Pentti Saikkonen & Carsten Trenkler, 2001. "Maximum eigenvalue versus trace tests for the cointegrating rank of a VAR process," Econometrics Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 4(2), pages 1-8.
    3. McCallum, Bennett T, 1984. "Are Bond-Financed Deficits Inflationary? A Ricardian Analysis," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 92(1), pages 123-135, February.
    4. Smith, Gregor W & Zin, Stanley E, 1991. "Persistent Deficits and the Market Value of Government Debt," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 6(1), pages 31-44, Jan.-Marc.
    5. Gregory, Allan W. & Hansen, Bruce E., 1996. "Residual-based tests for cointegration in models with regime shifts," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 70(1), pages 99-126, January.
    6. Quintos, Carmela E, 1995. "Sustainability of the Deficit Process with Structural Shifts," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 13(4), pages 409-417, October.
    7. Nelson, Charles R. & Plosser, Charles I., 1982. "Trends and random walks in macroeconmic time series : Some evidence and implications," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 10(2), pages 139-162.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. António Afonso, 2005. "Fiscal Sustainability: The Unpleasant European Case," FinanzArchiv: Public Finance Analysis, Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 61(1), pages 19-44, March.
    2. Paniagua, Jordi & Sapena, Juan & Tamarit, Cecilio, 2017. "Fiscal sustainability in EMU countries: A continued fiscal commitment?," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 85-97.
    3. Tang, Chor Foon, 2011. "Tourism, real output and real effective exchange rate in Malaysia: a view from rolling sub-samples," MPRA Paper 29379, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Paleologou, Suzanna-Maria, 2013. "Asymmetries in the revenue–expenditure nexus: A tale of three countries," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 52-60.
    5. António Afonso, 2000. "Fiscal policy sustainability: some unpleasant European evidence," Working Papers Department of Economics 2000/12, ISEG - Lisbon School of Economics and Management, Department of Economics, Universidade de Lisboa.
    6. Giancarlo Marini & Alessandro Piergallini, 2008. "Indicators and Tests of Fiscal Sustainability: An Integrated Approach," CEIS Research Paper 111, Tor Vergata University, CEIS, revised 11 Jul 2008.
    7. Francisco de Castro & José M. González-Páramo & Pablo Hernández de Cos, 2001. "Evaluating the dynamics of fiscal policy in Spain: patterns of interdependence and consistency of public expenditure and revenues," Working Papers 0103, Banco de España.
    8. Francisco De Castro & Pablo Hernández De Cos, 2002. "On the sustainability of the Spanish public budget performance," Hacienda Pública Española / Review of Public Economics, IEF, vol. 160(1), pages 9-28, march.
    9. Bajo-Rubio, Oscar & Diaz-Roldan, Carmen & Esteve, Vicente, 2006. "Is the budget deficit sustainable when fiscal policy is non-linear? The case of Spain," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 28(3), pages 596-608, September.
    10. Dimitris Hatzinikolaou & Theodore Simos, 2013. "A new test for deficit sustainability and its application to US data," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 45(1), pages 61-79, August.
    11. Thanh Dat Nguyen & Sandy Suardi & Chew Lian Chua, 2017. "The Behavior Of U.S. Public Debt And Deficits During The Global Financial Crisis," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 35(1), pages 201-215, January.
    12. Onel, Gulcan & Utkulu, Utku, 2006. "Modeling the long-run sustainability of Turkish external debt with structural changes," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 23(4), pages 669-682, July.
    13. Brittle, Shane, 2009. "Ricardian Equivalence and the Efficacy of Fiscal Policy in Australia," Economics Working Papers wp09-10, School of Economics, University of Wollongong, NSW, Australia.
    14. Munawar-Shah, Syed & Abdul-Majid, Mariani & Hussain-Shah, Syed, 2014. "Assessing Fiscal Sustainability for SAARC and IMT-GT Countries," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 5(2), pages 26-40.
    15. Goyal, Rajan & Khundrakpam, J. K. & Ray, Partha, 2004. "Is India's public finance unsustainable? Or, are the claims exaggerated?," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 26(3), pages 401-420, April.
    16. Josep Carrion-i-Silvestre & Vicente German-Soto, 2010. "Stochastic convergence in the industrial sector of the Mexican states," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 45(3), pages 547-570, December.
    17. Paulo Rodrigues & Denise Osborn, 1999. "Performance of seasonal unit root tests for monthly data," Journal of Applied Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 26(8), pages 985-1004.
    18. Campo Robledo, Jacobo, 2011. "Sostenibilidad fiscal: una aproximación con datos panel para 8 países Latinoaméricanos [Fiscal sustainability: A data panel approach for eight Latin American countries]," MPRA Paper 33091, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    19. Neaime, Simon, 2015. "Sustainability of budget deficits and public debts in selected European Union countries," The Journal of Economic Asymmetries, Elsevier, vol. 12(1), pages 1-21.
    20. Christian Bauer & Sebastian Weber, 2016. "The Efficiency of Monetary Policy when Guiding Inflation Expectations," Research Papers in Economics 2016-14, University of Trier, Department of Economics.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • R00 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General - - - General
    • Z0 - Other Special Topics - - General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ibn:ibrjnl:v:15:y:2022:i:3:p:61. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Canadian Center of Science and Education (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cepflch.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.