Mohamad Ghasemi; parisa mohajeri
Volume 15, Issue 56 , April 2015, , Pages 75-104
Abstract
Economic fluctuations and emergence of commercial cycles are inseparable parts of any economy. It is obvious that anti-cyclical behaviour of fiscal policies will stabilize the fluctuations. In fact, if the ratio of government expenditure to GDP decreases (increases) during a boom (recession) the behaviour ...
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Economic fluctuations and emergence of commercial cycles are inseparable parts of any economy. It is obvious that anti-cyclical behaviour of fiscal policies will stabilize the fluctuations. In fact, if the ratio of government expenditure to GDP decreases (increases) during a boom (recession) the behaviour of fiscal policy will be anti-cyclical. In this paper, using data released by the Central Bank for the period between 1966 and 2013, a model has been developed to test the anti-cyclical behaviour of fiscal policies in the Islamic Republic of Iran. The Findings of this paper indicate that, firstly, regardless of the calculation method of time series of GDP fluctuations– Hodrick-Prescott and State-Space models– the hypothesis of Iran’s anti-cyclical fiscal policies is rejected. Secondly, Nonconformity of financial rules and means of injection of resources resulted from oil export into government budget are two crucial issues explaining why Iran’s fiscal policies are not anti-cyclical. Thus, institutional reforms, especially budgetary structure of the country, could improve the performance of fiscal policies during the economic cycles
