ABSTRACT
National strategies for preparedness for future outbreaks of COVID-19 often include timely preparedness with vaccines. Fiscal health modelling (FHM) has recently been brought forward as an additional analysis by defining the public economic impact from a governmental perspective. As governments are the main decision-makers concerning pandemic preparedness, this study aimed to develop an FHM framework for infectious diseases in the Netherlands. Based on the Dutch COVID-19 outbreak of 2020 and 2021 and publicly available data on tax income and gross domestic product (GDP), the fiscal impact of COVID-19 was assessed using two approaches. Approach I: Prospective modelling of future fiscal impact based on publicly available laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 cases; and Approach II: Retrospective assessment of the extrapolated tax and benefit income and GDP. Approach I estimated the consequences that can be causally linked to the population counts reducing income taxes by EUR 266 million. The total fiscal loss amounted to EUR 164 million over 2 years (excluding pension payments averted). The total losses in terms of tax income (2020 and 2021) and GDP (2020) (Approach II), were estimated at, respectively, EUR 13.58 billion and EUR 96.3 billion. This study analysed different aspects of a communicable disease outbreak and its influence on government public accounts. The choice of the two presented approaches depends on the perspective of the analysis, the time horizon of the analysis and the availability of data.
ABSTRACT
Improving fiscal health expenditure efficiency is an inherent requirement of the strategy of "healthy China" and "high-quality development". The outbreak of COVID-19 has highlighted the importance of efficient health system. First, this paper systematically sorts out the multiple theoretical mechanisms of the positive and negative relationship between vertical fiscal imbalance and fiscal health expenditure efficiency. Secondly, a comprehensive index system, including the quantity and quality of medical services, is constructed, and the super-efficiency DEA model is used to measure fiscal health expenditure efficiency. There are obvious differences between eastern and western regions. Finally, the fixed effect model is constructed to carry out empirical research and it is found that the vertical fiscal imbalance in China has an overall positive and significant impact on the fiscal health expenditure efficiency, which is mainly achieved by optimizing the resources allocation between primary medical institutions and hospitals. Heterogeneity analysis shows that transfer payment scale has a corrective effect on the vertical fiscal imbalance's effect. The result of quantile regression shows that the impact of vertical fiscal imbalance is not constant, and it gradually turns from positive to negative along with the improvement of fiscal health expenditure efficiency.
Subject(s)
COVID-19 , Health Expenditures , Humans , COVID-19/epidemiology , Efficiency , Resource Allocation , ChinaABSTRACT
The Covid-19 pandemic wreaked havoc on global economies. Emerging markets were hit particularly harder during the Covid19 pandemic due to their reliance on exports, tourism, and weaker fiscal policies. This paper aims to analyze the performance of the equity markets of 22 developing countries based on their average firm-related characteristics, macroeconomic conditions, and freedom variables during the early outbreak of Covid-19. Our results show that leverage, the fiscal health of the country, and financial freedom were the most important variables for emerging market countries as they provided resilience during the Pandemic. These findings have clear policy implications and are important for the sustainability of emerging stock markets. © 2022, AfricaGrowth Institute. All rights reserved.