EIJA M. VINNARI, Affiliation Unknown
SALME NÄSI, Affiliation Unknown

Traditionally, the financial balance of public sector economic entities has been determined by balanced budgets and cash-based or modified cash-based budgetary accounting. Since the 1990s the superiority of accrual accounting in the public sector context has been emphasized by both practitioners and academics. This paper demonstrates that accrual accounting also offers opportunities for the use of creative accounting, or earnings management, in the public sector, at least as long as accounting is performed in accordance with diverse national norms instead of internationally acceptable accounting standards.

JOHN CONSIDINE, National University of Ireland - University College Cork
LIAM A. GALLAGHER, Affiliation Unknown

In this paper we assess whether the UK public finances were sustainable for the period 1919-2001. A robust test of sustainability is presented using a nonlinear representation of the debt-GDP ratio. Empirical evidence supports debt sustainability. Moreover, the exponential smooth transition autoregressive representation is evidence that sustainability is the result of active debt management rather than tax smoothing. The results strongly support the active debt management hypothesis for the UK.

FRED THOMPSON, Willamette University - Atkinson Graduate School of Management
Email: fthompso@willamette.edu
BRUCE GATES, Willamette University - Atkinson Graduate School of Management
Email: bgates@willamette.edu

Accurately predicting revenue growth is nearly impossible. Predicting the peaks and valleys of the business cycle is even more hopeless. This matters because tax revenues are largely driven by economic growth. Volatile, unpredictable revenue growth causes all sorts of unpleasant responses on the part of governments, most commonly manic-depressive patterns of spending and taxing. Fortunately, modern financial economics gives us a set of tools that can be used to manage volatility. These tools include tax portfolio analyses, hedging and buffering strategies, and, in the context of present-value balance, consumption smoothing based on sustainable spending rules. These tools are based on mean-variance analysis, analysis of covariance, the use of stochastic processes to model movements in financial variables, and optimal control theory to formulate solutions to those processes. This article shows how these tools can be used to inform fiscal decision-making. Our focus is on state governments, but our analysis applies to all jurisdictions that face a hard budget constraint and must therefore balance spending increases against revenue growth.

CARMEN M. REINHART, University of Maryland - School of Public Affairs, National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)
Email: creinhar@umd.edu
KENNETH ROGOFF, Harvard University - Department of Economics, National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)
Email: krogoff@harvard.edu

There is a rich scholarly literature on sovereign default on external debt. Comparatively little is known about sovereign defaults on domestic debt. Even today, cross-country data on domestic public debt remains curiously exotic, particularly prior to the 1980s. We have filled this gap in the literature by compiling a database on central government public debt (external and domestic). The data span 1914 to 2007 for most countries, reaching back into the nineteenth century for many. Our findings on debt sustainability, sovereign defaults, the temptation to inflate, and the hierarchy of creditors only scratch the surface of what the domestic public debt data can reveal. First, domestic debt is big - for the 64 countries for which we have long time series, domestic debt accounts for almost two-thirds of total public debt. For most of the sample, this debt carries a market interest rate (except for the financial repression era between WWII and financial liberalization). Second, the data go a long ways toward explaining the puzzle of why countries so often default on their external debts at seemingly low debt thresholds. Third, domestic debt has largely been ignored in the vast empirical work on inflation. In fact, domestic debt (a significant portion of which is long term and non-indexed) is often much larger than the monetary base in the run-up to high inflation episodes. Last, the widely-held view that domestic residents are strictly junior to external creditors does not find broad support.