The Dynamic Iinterrelationships Between Fiscal and Monetary Policies in Jordan

This study aims to answer the question: What is the nature of the relationship between fiscal and monetary policy in Jordan? Are the two policies complementary to each other, alternatives, or go in opposite directions?. This study applies the vector autoregression VAR, the Impulse Response Function test, the Granger Causality test, and the. Variance Decomposition Analysis. The results showed that there is a bidirectional causal relationship between government expenditures and money supply, as well as a bidirectional causal relationship between tax revenues and money supply, the main conclusion that the fiscal policy through the use of government expenditures and tax revenues and the monetary policy through the money supply go in the same direction, and complement each other, this is supported by the fact that the expansionary fiscal policy in Jordan during the study period was also accompanied by an expansionary monetary policy. The monetary authority sets interest rates on loans and there is no significant role for fiscal policy instruments in influencing the interest rate in Jordan. The study recommends harmonization between the declared and implemented policy. Each authority should serve its goals with independence and complementarity between the two policies. In this case, coordination means preventing extremism in pursuing an expansionary or contractionary policy from this or that authority, what is required is that the Central Bank and the Ministry of Finance agree on coordination, integration and balance between objectives.

Cyprus Economy in the Light of Debt Problem

The model created by using the independent variables of total income, total capital, total savings, government expenditures, and employment, which I think has a significant impact on the growth of the Cyprus economy, has been examined in the light of the debt problem. Annual time-series data from 1995Q to 2017Q were obtained from the Cyprus State Planning Office in Cyprus. Unrestricted VAR (Vector Autoregression) model was used to test the causal relationship of the variables considered. Empirical findings revealed that some variables such as Wald test results for 78 lags, respectively, affect the GDP growth rate together. In particular, it was observed that there are bidirectional influences between employment, government expenditures, total capital, and savings which are not estimated in former studies. In addition, total income and total savings coefficients have a unidirectional influence on employment. It has been observed that the expenditure and savings coefficients also affect the total income.

Financial Stability and Economic Growth: Evidence from North Cyprus

Given the importance of public debt for financial stability and economic progress, this article examines the unstable economic growth rate in Northern Cyprus. The causal relationships between public debt, public expenditures, total capital, consumption, investment, employment, net exports, and GDP growth rate are questioned. This study used annual time series data between 1980 and 2018 obtained from the State Planning Organization. An unrestricted VAR model was used to test the causal relationship of these variables. Findings show that public debt has no direct effect on GDP. However, it indirectly affects the total capital and government expenditures as an independent variable. Except for public debt, all other variables have a value that will affect net exports. Unlike other studies, employment as an independent variable has the value of influencing GDP, total capital, consumption, government expenditures, and net exports as dependent variables. It has been observed that consumption, investment, and government expenditure coefficients have values that will affect GDP. Insufficient control of government practices, the North Cyprus government's inefficient plans to encourage domestic production, insufficient enforcement power of domestic producers, as well as increased capital outflows, increased government debt, and budget deficit are not sustainable models.

Testing the Environmental Kuznets Curve Hypotheses in Chinese Provinces: A Nexus between Regional Government Expenditures and Environmental Quality

With rapid economic growth, the Chinese government expenditures at various levels have increased adequately. At the same time, the environmental quality in China has deteriorated significantly. In this study, provincial-level data for 31 Chinese provinces during 2007–2017 are used to investigate the impacts of government expenditure on the emissions of three specific measures of environmental degradation. The main objective of this study is to examine the influence of government expenditures, economic growth per capita, environment protection expenditure, and added second-sector value on environmental quality by measuring sulfur dioxide (SO2), chemical oxygen demand (COD), and ammonia nitrogen emissions (AN). Moreover, the study applied the generalized method of moments (GMM) and the fully modified least square (FMOLS) to estimate the co-integration relationship among the underlying factors. The results demonstrate a significant direct effect of government expenditure on improving environmental quality overall in the Chinese provinces, which increases with the level of economic growth. However, the results also confirmed the inverted N-shaped relationship between the pollution factor and economic growth per capita. Our key findings lead toward the manifestation and emphasis of the importance of appropriate policies for restoring government expenditure and, at the same time, strengthening the relationship between the industrial sector and environmental policy standards. Significantly, governments in developing countries should allocate larger budgets for environmental projects in their fiscal reforms for the sake of moving to greener and more inclusive economies with low-carbon activities.

Is the Fiscal Deficit of ASEAN Alarming? Evidence from Fiscal Deficit Consequences and Contribution towards Sustainable Economic Growth

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has faced a persistent fiscal deficit for the last three decades. In the vast literature, a question is still arising: is ASEAN’s fiscal deficit alarming? This study explores the fiscal deficit with different perspectives to provide guidelines for policymakers to answer this question. For this purpose, we offer fiscal causal hypotheses estimates, including the contribution of Government expenditures (GEs) and Government revenues (GRs) towards sustainable economic growth; we then evaluated two additional deficit hypotheses, the impact of fiscal deficit and deficit financing on inflation. This empirical analysis covered annual financial data for the years 1990 to 2019 of ten member countries of ASEAN by applying panel econometric techniques, which include unit root Levin, Lin, and Chu (LLC) and Im, Pesaran, and Shin (IPS) tests; the panel autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model for cointegration; and the Dumitrescu–Hurlin (DH) test for causality. The findings revealed that government expenditures contribute more towards sustainable economic growth while government revenues are inversely related to growth in the long run. The DH causality test supported the fiscal synchronization hypothesis and current account targeting hypothesis in ASEAN. The interest rate is found as a moderator between fiscal and current account deficits. Furthermore, the findings showed that the fiscal deficit of ASEAN could generate inflation while relying on outstanding debt. Overall, our findings concluded that the fiscal deficit of ASEAN is alarming based on the behavior of government revenues, interest rate dynamics, political stability, and outstanding debt in deficit financing.