The many practical economic and political difficulties encountered in
discretionary fiscal stabilisation policy highlight the potential benefits of
allowing automatic fiscal stabilisers to operate over the cycle. This article
investigates the relevance of tax revenue as an automatic fiscal stabiliser in the
South African economy by an empirical analysis of its role and impact since the
1970s. The study finds that cyclical changes in tax revenue are relatively small
and provide no significant evidence of automatic stabilisation; however, the
potential of this tool as an effective automatic fiscal stabiliser in South Africa
cannot be overlooked as results show a high correlation between the output gap
and automatic stabiliser estimates. Automatic fiscal stabilisers were employed
symmetrically over the cycle and results showed that automatic fiscal stabilisers
became increasingly important towards the end of the sample period.
Swanepoel, J.A.; Schoeman, N.J. (Nicolaas Johannes)(Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences, University of Pretoria, 2003-12)
As actual budget balances reflect both cyclical developments and discretionary
measures, they are not very useful when seeking to assess the orientation of
underlying fiscal policy and possible structural imbalances in ...
Du Bruyn, Rudrik; Venter, J.M.P.(School of Accounting Sciences, University of Pretoria, 1998)
This article investigates the principles used in the allocation of revenue resources to the nine provincial governments based on the recommendations of the Financial and Fiscal Commission. The article identifies the aspects ...
This paper investigates the usefulness of different definitions of the budget deficit and
their impact on fiscal sustainability. The analysis shows that a number of alternative
definitions of the budget deficit are useful, ...
