Survey of Fiscal sustainability in Iran

Abstract

An oil-producing country face fiscal challenges arising from the fact that oil revenue is exhaustible, volatile, and uncertain and largely originates from abroad. The dependence of government revenue on oil proceeds which are unpredictable significantly complicates fiscal management policy in short and long run. Sustainability generally, concerns current and expected future policies. If governments do not expect current and future policies to lead to an intertemporal budget constraint, then the fiscal process would be unsustainable. This paper has empirically examined the sustainability of fiscal policy in Iran and provides a theoretical framework for analyzing of the sustainability of fiscal policy based on the government intertemporal budget constraint. Co integration and multi co integration methodologies such as Engle-Granger and Johansen-Josilios as well as Barro’s (1979, 1986) Tax-Smoothing Model were used to evaluate fiscal budgeting processes in Iran. It was found that the fiscal budgeting process in Iran is not sustainable and the Iranian fiscal policy, as far as oil and gas income is concerned, is not a fully responsible policy. In addition the evidence in this research shows that the government spending and revenues in Iran are independent.

Keywords

• sustainability
• sustainability test
• fiscal policy
• budget deficit
• oil economy