The World Bank Economic Review Advance Access originally published online on November 1, 2008
The World Bank Economic Review 2009 23(1):119-140; doi:10.1093/wber/lhn011
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Quantitative Approaches to Fiscal Sustainability Analysis: A Case Study of Turkey since the Crisis of 2001
Nina Budina is a senior economist in the Economic Policy and Debt Department at the World Bank; her e-mail address is nbudina{at}worldbank.org
Sweder van Wijnbergen (corresponding author) is a professor of economics at the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands; A technical appendix to this paper is available at
Correspondence: http://go.worldbank.org/EJCL5YFGX0
Correspondence: his e-mail address is svanwijnbergen{at}gmail.com
JEL codes: E61, E62, F34, C15
This case study of fiscal sustainability in Turkey after the crisis in 2001 reviews and extends quantitative approaches to fiscal sustainability analysis and brings them together in a user-friendly tool applicable in a data-sparse environment. It combines a dynamic simulations approach with a steady-state consistency approach. It also incorporates user-defined stress tests and stochastic simulations to deal with uncertainty. And it derives the future distribution of debt-output ratios, evaluating the fiscal adjustment required to stabilize them. Value at Risk analysis shows that considerable risks remain unless explicit feedback rules from debt surprises to the primary surplus are implemented.