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Fiscal space for investment in infrastructure in Colombia

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Author Info
Suescun, Rodrigo

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Abstract

For the evaluation of macroeconomic policies Colombian authorities rely heavily, if not exclusively, on the operational framework known as the Financial Programming Model developed by the International Monetary Fund in the 1950s. Based on this static framework, the formulation of fiscal policy in the country, just as in various Latin American countries, focuses primarily on fiscal deficit and gross debt targets. However, the type of fiscal policy advice derived from it is not useful for understanding the asset-creating nature and the inter-temporal tradeoffs involved in public investment decisions. The author develops a perfect foresight, dynamic small open economy model to provide an alternative framework for fiscal analysis and policy purposes. He shows that the two competing frameworks deliver differing paths for the expected behavior of the Colombian economy. He then uses the proposed framework to study the likely consequences of using public capital spending to achieve deficit targets since, in addition to an already high public debt, in the years ahead unfunded pension obligations will put enormous pressure on the Colombian government's solvency. The results indicate that public capital compression is costly in terms of foregone growth and very ineffective in achieving fiscal consolidation. The adoption of fiscal rules such as the golden rule or the permanent balance rule to shield public investment from undue budgetary pressures makes little sense in the presence of sustainability concerns. The author shows that a transitory capital spending increase is not self-amortizing in the long run; hence an extra peso of public capital spending deteriorates the inter-temporal fiscal position. A permanent increase largely pays for itself in terms of additional tax revenue but this effect is offset by a deterioration of infrastructure user charges, as long as public prices are determined competitively.

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Paper provided by The World Bank in its series Policy Research Working Paper Series with number 3629.

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Date of creation: 01 Jun 2005
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Handle: RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:3629

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Keywords: Economic Theory&Research; Environmental Economics&Policies; Banks&Banking Reform; Public Sector Economics&Finance; Economic Stabilization;

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Cited by:
(explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)

  1. Semmler, Willi & Greiner, Alfred & Diallo, Bobo & Rezai, Armon & Rajaram, Anand, 2007. "Fiscal policy, public expenditure composition, and growth theory and empirics," Policy Research Working Paper Series 4405, The World Bank. [Downloadable!]
  2. Pereira, Ricardo Antônio de Castro & Ferreira, Pedro Cavalcanti Gomes, 2007. "Efeitos de Crescimento e Bem-estar da Lei de Parceria Público-Privada no Brasil," Economics Working Papers (Ensaios Economicos da EPGE) 648, Graduate School of Economics, Getulio Vargas Foundation (Brazil). [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  3. Easterly, William & Irwin, Timothy & Serven, Luis, 2007. "Walking up the down escalator : public investment and fiscal stability," Policy Research Working Paper Series 4158, The World Bank. [Downloadable!]
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