The economy of Djibouti is derived in large part from its strategic location on the Red Sea. Djibouti is mostly barren, with little development in the agricultural and industrial sectors. The country has a harsh climate, a largely unskilled labour force, and limited natural resources. The country's most important economic asset is its strategic location connecting the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. As such, Djibouti's economy is commanded by the services sector, providing services as both a transit port for the region and as an international transshipment and refueling centre.
In economics and political science, fiscal policy is the use of government revenue collection and expenditure to influence a country's economy. The use of government revenues and expenditures to influence macroeconomic variables developed as a result of the Great Depression, when the previous laissez-faire approach to economic management became unpopular. Fiscal policy is based on the theories of the British economist John Maynard Keynes, whose Keynesian economics theorized that government changes in the levels of taxation and government spending influences aggregate demand and the level of economic activity. Fiscal and monetary policy are the key strategies used by a country's government and central bank to advance its economic objectives. The combination of these policies enables these authorities to target inflation and to increase employment. Additionally, it is designed to try to keep GDP growth at 2%–3% and the unemployment rate near the natural unemployment rate of 4%–5%. This implies that fiscal policy is used to stabilize the economy over the course of the business cycle.
In economics, the fiscal multiplier is the ratio of change in national income arising from a change in government spending. More generally, the exogenous spending multiplier is the ratio of change in national income arising from any autonomous change in spending. When this multiplier exceeds one, the enhanced effect on national income may be called the multiplier effect. The mechanism that can give rise to a multiplier effect is that an initial incremental amount of spending can lead to increased income and hence increased consumption spending, increasing income further and hence further increasing consumption, etc., resulting in an overall increase in national income greater than the initial incremental amount of spending. In other words, an initial change in aggregate demand may cause a change in aggregate output that is a multiple of the initial change.
Deficit spending is the amount by which spending exceeds revenue over a particular period of time, also called simply deficit, or budget deficit; the opposite of budget surplus. The term may be applied to the budget of a government, private company, or individual. Government deficit spending is a central point of controversy in economics, as discussed below.
A government budget is a financial statement presenting the government's proposed revenues and spending for a financial year. The government budget balance, also alternatively referred to as general government balance, public budget balance, or public fiscal balance, is the overall difference between government revenues and spending. A positive balance is called a government budget surplus, and a negative balance is a government budget deficit. A budget is prepared for each level of government and takes into account public social security obligations.
Austerity is a set of political-economic policies that aim to reduce government budget deficits through spending cuts, tax increases, or a combination of both. Austerity measures are often used by governments that find it difficult to borrow or meet their existing obligations to pay back loans. The measures are meant to reduce the budget deficit by bringing government revenues closer to expenditures. This reduces the amount of borrowing required and may also demonstrate a government's fiscal discipline to creditors and credit rating agencies and make borrowing easier or cheaper as a result.
Structural adjustment programs (SAPs) consist of loans provided by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB) to countries that experience economic crises. Their purpose is to adjust the country's economic structure, improve international competitiveness, and restore its balance of payments.
Fiscal policy is considered any changes the government makes to the national budget in order to influence a nation's economy. The approach to economic policy in the United States was rather laissez-faire until the Great Depression. The government tried to stay away from economic matters as much as possible and hoped that a balanced budget would be maintained. Prior to the Great Depression, the economy did have economic downturns and some were quite severe. However, the economy tended to self-correct so the laissez faire approach to the economy tended to work.
The economic history of the Republic of Turkey may be studied according to sub-periods signified with major changes in economic policy:
- 1923–1929, when development policy emphasised private accumulation;
- 1929–1945 when development policy emphasised state accumulation in a period of global crises;
- 1950–1980, a period of state guided industrialisation based on import substituting protectionism;
- 1980 onwards, opening of the Turkish economy to liberal trade in goods, services and financial market transactions.
A government budget is a document prepared by the government and/or other political entity presenting its anticipated tax revenues and proposed spending/expenditure for the coming financial year. In most parliamentary systems, the budget is presented to the lower house of the legislature and often requires approval of the legislature. Through this budget, the government implements economic policy and realizes its program priorities. Once the budget is approved, the use of funds from individual chapters is in the hands of government, ministries and other institutions. Revenues of the state budget consist mainly of taxes, customs duties, fees and other revenues. State budget expenditures cover the activities of the state, which are either given by law or the constitution. The budget in itself does not appropriate funds for government programs, which requires additional legislative measures.
Macroeconomic policy instruments are macroeconomic quantities that can be directly controlled by an economic policy maker. Instruments can be divided into two subsets: a) monetary policy instruments and b) fiscal policy instruments. Monetary policy is conducted by the central bank of a country or of a supranational region. Fiscal policy is conducted by the executive and legislative branches of the government and deals with managing a nation’s budget.
The Ministry of Finance of Chile is the cabinet-level administrative office in charge of managing the financial affairs, fiscal policy, and capital markets of Chile; planning, directing, coordinating, executing, controlling and informing all financial policies formulated by the President of Chile.
Canadian government debt, also called Canada’s “public debt,” is the liabilities of the government sector. For 2019, total financial liabilities or gross debt was $2434 billion for the consolidated Canadian general government . This corresponds to 105.3% as a ratio of GDP . Of the gross debt, $1145 billion or 47% was federal (central) government liabilities . Provincial government liabilities comprise most of the remaining liabilities.
The Greek government-debt crisis is the ongoing sovereign debt crisis faced by Greece in the aftermath of the financial crisis of 2007–08. Widely known in the country as The Crisis, it reached the populace as a series of sudden reforms and austerity measures that led to impoverishment and loss of income and property, as well as a small-scale humanitarian crisis. In all, the Greek economy suffered the longest recession of any advanced capitalist economy to date, overtaking the US Great Depression. As a result, the Greek political system has been upended, social exclusion increased, and hundreds of thousands of well-educated Greeks have left the country.
The Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management Act, 2003 (FRBMA) is an Act of the Parliament of India to institutionalize financial discipline, reduce India's fiscal deficit, improve macroeconomic management and the overall management of the public funds by moving towards a balanced budget and strengthen fiscal prudence. The main purpose was to eliminate revenue deficit of the country and bring down the fiscal deficit to a manageable 3% of the GDP by March 2008. However, due to the 2007 international financial crisis, the deadlines for the implementation of the targets in the act was initially postponed and subsequently suspended in 2009. In 2011, given the process of ongoing recovery, Economic Advisory Council publicly advised the Government of India to reconsider reinstating the provisions of the FRBMA. N. K. Singh is currently the Chairman of the review committee for Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management Act, 2003, under the Ministry of Finance (India), Government of India.
The Euro-Plus Pact was adopted in March 2011 under EU's Open Method of Coordination, as an intergovernmental agreement between all member states of the European Union, in which concrete commitments were made to be working continuously within a new commonly agreed political general framework for the implementation of structural reforms intended to improve competitiveness, employment, financial stability and the fiscal strength of each country. The plan was advocated by the French and German governments as one of many needed political responses to strengthen the EMU in areas which the European sovereign-debt crisis had revealed as being too poorly constructed.
Deficit reduction in the United States refers to taxation, spending, and economic policy debates and proposals designed to reduce the Federal budget deficit. Government agencies including the Government Accountability Office (GAO), Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the Office of Management and Budget (OMB),and the U.S. Treasury Department have reported that the federal government is facing a series of important long-run financing challenges, mainly driven by an aging population, rising healthcare costs per person, and rising interest payments on the national debt.
Fiscal sustainability, or public finance sustainability, is the ability of a government to sustain its current spending, tax and other policies in the long run without threatening government solvency or defaulting on some of its liabilities or promised expenditures. There is no consensus among economists on a precise operational definition for fiscal sustainability, rather different studies use their own, often similar, definitions. However, the European Commission defines public finance sustainability as: the ability of a government to sustain its current spending, tax and other policies in the long run without threatening the government's solvency or without defaulting on some of the government's liabilities or promised expenditures. Many countries and research institutes have published reports which assess the sustainability of fiscal policies based on long-run projections of country's public finances. These assessments attempt to determine whether an adjustment to current fiscal policies that is required to reconcile projected revenues with projected expenditures. The size of the required adjustment is given with measures such as the Fiscal gap. In empirical works, weak and strong fiscal sustainability are distinguished. Differences are related to both econometric techniques used for examination and variables involved.
Thailand joined the IMF on May 3, 1949 and has been the recipient of numerous IMF programs, most notably in its role as the source of contagion in the 1997 Asian financial crisis. Thailand currently has a quota of 3,211.9 million SDR's, which gives it the second most voting power in its constituency after Turkey. The IMF opened a technical assistance office in Thailand in 2012 to provide technical assistance and training to the Lao PDR and the Republic of the Union of Myanmar.
Jürgen von Hagen is a German economist and professor at the University of Bonn, where he currently also serves as director of the Institute for International Economic Policy. He was awarded the Gossen Prize in 1997.
