Fiscal Sustainability in Indonesia with Asymmetry

The management of fiscal balance determines public debt sustainability, where a positive response of primary balance towards the debt ratio indicates a sustainable path. However, there might be asymmetry in the government’s fiscal management between different phases of the debt trajectory and business cycle. This study examines the sustainability of fiscal imbalance and public debt in Indonesia using the fiscal reaction function with annual fiscal data from 1976 to 2019. We incorporate asymmetry by decomposing the lagged debt ratio and cyclical output variables into their positive and negative partial sums. We find that Indonesia’s fiscal imbalance is on a path of weak sustainability as revenue grows more slowly than expenditure in the long run, with the bi-directional Granger causality between the two indicating fiscal synchronization. Long-run public debt sustainability is on a more sustainable path as primary surplus responds positively to the debt ratio. However, our asymmetric analysis suggests that this might be a false impression as primary balance decreases only in response to debt ratio decrease but increases less or fails to increase when the debt ratio rises, which is potentially dangerous.

The Fiscal Imbalances and Methodological Approaches to Their Assessment

This article generalizes and systematizes approaches to determining the essence of fiscal imbalances and their types, in particular, taking into account and without taking into account the aspect of possible problems in the sphere of fiscal policy. It is also emphasized that when determining the essence of fiscal imbalances, it is important to realize the difference between accounting and financial terms, since analytics in this terminology is also based on different methods of assessing fiscal imbalance. Such deterministic factors of fiscal imbalances as internal tax competition, tax transfer and tax imbalance in general are analyzed. The conception of marginal expenditures of public funds as a central concept in determining fiscal imbalances is characterized. In addition to the traditional types of fiscal imbalances (vertical and horizontal), there is also an imbalance of justice (according to the research of scientist Dolozina I. L.), which is manifested, in particular, in tax evasion, avoidance of taxation (including aggressive tax planning) and income inequality. The generalized classification of types of fiscal imbalances with the characterizations of causes and manifestations of their occurrence is provided. The results of researches of approaches to assessing fiscal imbalances and indicators used are systematized. It is emphasized that the researchers use most of the indicators to assess fiscal imbalances specified in this article to conduct a panel analysis in order to identify the impact of equalization instruments on different territories and groups of taxpayers.