Download or read book Energy Subsidies and Public Social Spending written by Mr.Christian Ebeke and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2015-05-06 with total page 30 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper shows that high energy subsidies and low public social spending can emerge as an equilibrium outcome of a political game between the elite and the middle-class when the provision of public goods is subject to bottlenecks, reflecting weak domestic institutions. We test this and other predictions of our model using a large cross-section of emerging markets and low-income countries. The main empirical challenge is that subsidies and social spending could be jointly determined (e.g., at the time of the budget), leading to a simultaneity bias in OLS estimates. To address this concern, we adopt an identification strategy whereby subsidies in a given country are instrumented by the level of subsidies in neighboring countries. Our Instrumental Variable (IV) estimations suggest that public expenditures in education and health were on average lower by 0.6 percentage point of GDP in countries where energy subsidies were 1 percentage point of GDP higher. Moreover, we find that the crowding-out was stronger in the presence of weak domestic institutions, narrow fiscal space, and among the net oil importers.

Download or read book Energy Subsidies and Public Social Spending written by Christian Ebeke and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 31 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper shows that high energy subsidies and low public social spending can emerge as an equilibrium outcome of a political game between the elite and the middle-class when the provision of public goods is subject to bottlenecks, reflecting weak domestic institutions. We test this and other predictions of our model using a large cross-section of emerging markets and low-income countries. The main empirical challenge is that subsidies and social spending could be jointly determined (e.g., at the time of the budget), leading to a simultaneity bias in OLS estimates. To address this concern, we.

Download or read book Energy Subsidy Reform written by Mr.Benedict J. Clements and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2013-09-13 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Energy subsidies are aimed at protecting consumers, however, subsidies aggravate fiscal imbalances, crowd out priority public spending, and depress private investment, including in the energy sector. This book provides the most comprehensive estimates of energy subsidies currently available for 176 countries and an analysis of “how to do” energy subsidy reform, drawing on insights from 22 country case studies undertaken by the IMF staff and analyses carried out by other institutions.

Download or read book Energy Subsidy Reform Lessons and Implications written by International Monetary Fund. Fiscal Affairs Dept. and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2013-01-28 with total page 69 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Energy subsidies have wide-ranging economic consequences. While aimed at protecting consumers, subsidies aggravate fiscal imbalances, crowd-out priority public spending, and depress private investment, including in the energy sector. Subsidies also distort resource allocation by encouraging excessive energy consumption, artificially promoting capital-intensive industries, reducing incentives for investment in renewable energy, and accelerating the depletion of natural resources. Most subsidy benefits are captured by higher-income households, reinforcing inequality. Even future generations are affected through the damaging effects of increased energy consumption on global warming. This paper provides: (i) the most comprehensive estimates of energy subsidies currently available for 176 countries; and (ii) an analysis of ?how to do energy subsidy reform, drawing on insights from 22 country case studies undertaken by IMF staff and analyses carried out by other institutions.

Download or read book Energy Subsidies written by Anja von Moltke and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-09-08 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The need to reform energy subsidies was one of the pressing issues highlighted at the World Summit on Sustainable Development. Many types of subsidy, especially those that encourage the production and use of fossil fuel, and other non-renewable forms of energy, are harmful to the environment. They can also have high financial and economic costs, and often only bring few benefits to the people for whom they are intended.Removing, reducing or restructuring such energy subsidies is helpful for the environment and the economy at the same time. Potential social costs in terms of employment in the conventional energy industry or reduced access to energy could be addressed by redirecting the money formerly spent on subsidies to income support, health, environment, education or regional development programmes.Of course, subsidies can have certain positive consequences, particularly where they are aimed at encouraging more sustainable energy production and use. Temporary support for renewable energy and energy-efficient technologies to overcome market barriers, and measures to improve poor or rural households' access to modern, commercial forms of energy, for instance, could be positive measures in support of sustainable development.Based on ground-breaking work undertaken by UNEP and the International Energy Agency, this book aims to raise awareness of the actual and potential impacts of energy subsidies and provide guidance to policy-makers on how to design and implement energy-subsidy reforms. It provides methodologies for analysing the impact of subsidies and their reform, and reviews experiences with energy subsidies in a number of countries and regions. Drawing on these case studies, it analyses the lessons learned as well as the policy implications, and provides guidance on how to overcome resistance to reform.The book provides an analytical framework which aims to set the scene for the detailed discussion of energy-subsidy issues at the country level. It considers how subsidies are defined, how they can be measured, how big they are and how their effects can be assessed. A more detailed discussion of methodological approaches to the assessment of the economic, environmental and social effects of subsidies and their reform is contained in the Annex.Chapters 3–11 of the book contain country case studies from contributing authors, which review various experiences and issues related to energy subsidies in selected countries, but do not strive for a common approach. They are organised along geographical lines, beginning with a review of energy subsidies generally in OECD countries. Case studies of energy subsidies in transition economies – the Czech and Slovak Republics (Chapter 4) and Russia (Chapter 5) – follow. Three studies of Asian countries focus on the costs of different types of energy subsidy: electricity subsidies in India (Chapter 6), oil subsidies in Indonesia (Chapter 7) and energy subsidies generally in Korea (Chapter 8). Chapter 9 reviews the effect of energy subsidies in Iran and suggests a pragmatic approach to reforming them. This is followed by an assessment of the LPG subsidy programme in Senegal (Chapter 10) and an analysis of the effects of removing coal and oil subsides in Chile (Chapter 11).Chapter 12 analyses the lessons learned from these case studies, focusing on the economic, environmental and social effects and their implications for policy. Finally, Chapter 13 discusses the implications of these findings and makes practical recommendations for designing and implementing policy reforms.This book will be essential for both practitioners and academics involved in the energy sector and for governments and policy-makers wishing to examine the reform of energy subsidies.

Download or read book Efficiency and Equity in Social Spending written by Nancy Birdsall and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 1990 with total page 43 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In most countries it is easy to identify reallocations of public spending for social programs that would improve efficiency and simultaneously improve the distribution of income and better serve the poor. The authors suggest why these reallocations are difficult but not impossible to bring about.

Download or read book Subsidy Reform in the Middle East and North Africa written by Mr.Carlo A Sdralevich and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2014-07-09 with total page 130 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) countries price subsidies are common, especially on food and fuels. However, these are neither well targeted nor cost effective as a social protection tool, often benefiting mainly the better off instead of the poor and vulnerable. This paper explores the challenges of replacing generalized price subsidies with more equitable social safety net instruments, including the short-term inflationary effects, and describes the features of successful subsidy reforms.

Download or read book Energy Subsidies Lessons Learned in Assessing their Impact and Designing Policy Reforms written by and published by UNEP/Earthprint. This book was released on 2003 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Fossil Fuel Subsidy Reforms written by Jun Rentschler and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-04-27 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Countries around the world are spending up to $500 billion per year on subsidising fossil fuel consumption. By some estimates, the G20 countries alone are spending around another $450 billion on subsidising fossil fuel production. In addition, the indirect social welfare costs of these subsidies have been shown to be substantial – for instance due to air pollution, road congestion, climate change, and economic inefficiency, to name a few. Considering these numbers, there is no doubt that fossil fuel subsidies cause severe economic distortions that compromise countries’ prospects of achieving equitable and sustainable development. This book provides a guide to the complex challenge of designing, assessing, and implementing effective fossil fuel subsidy reforms. It shows that subsidy reform requires a careful balancing of complex economic and political trade-offs, as well as measures to mitigate adverse effects on vulnerable households and to assist firms with implementing efficiency enhancing measures. Going beyond the purely fiscal perspective, this book emphasises that smart subsidy reforms can contribute to all three dimensions of sustainable development – environment, society, and economy. Over the course of eight chapters, this book considers a wide range of agents and stakeholders, markets, and policy measures in order to distil the key principles of designing effective fossil fuel subsidy reforms. This book will be of great relevance to scholars and policy makers with an interest in energy economics and policy, climate change policy, and sustainable development more broadly.

Download or read book Toward More Efficient and Effective Public Social Spending in Central America written by Pablo Acosta and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2017-06-06 with total page 175 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Central America has come a long way both in terms of economic and political stability. Increasingly the region is focusing on implementing productivity-enhancing reforms as well as supporting reductions in poverty and inequality. This report analyzes recent trends in public social spending in Central America from 2007 to 2014, conducts international benchmarking, examines measures of the effectiveness and efficiency of social spending, and discusses the quality of selected institutions influencing this spending. We examine total social spending, as well as detailing its four components: public spending on the education, health, and social protection and labor (SPL) sectors. In analyzing public social spending, the report addresses three crucial policy issues: (a) how to improve the coverage and redistributional incidence of public social spending; (b) how to enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of public social spending; and (c) how to strengthen the institutions governing public spending in the social sector. While based heavily on a series of recent analytical social spending studies in six countries in the subregion—Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Panama—this report also takes a broader regional perspective and includes some comparisons to countries in other regions.

Download or read book Energy Subsidy Reform in Sub Saharan Africa written by Mr.Trevor Serge Coleridge Alleyne and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2013-08-12 with total page 125 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The reform of energy subsidies is an important but challenging issue for sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries. There is a relatively large theoretical and empirical literature on this issue. While this paper relies on that literature, too, it tailors its discussion to SSA countries to respond to the following questions: Why it is important to reduce energy subsidies? What are the difficulties involved in energy subsidy reform? How best can a subsidy reform be implemented? This paper uses various sources of information on SSA countries: quantitative assessments, surveys, and individual (but standardized) case studies.

Download or read book Welfare for the Wealthy written by Christopher G. Faricy and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-10-22 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How does political party control determine changes to social policy, and by extension, influence inequality in America? Conventional theories show that Democratic control of the federal government produces more social expenditures and less inequality. Welfare for the Wealthy re-examines this relationship by evaluating how political party power results in changes to both public social spending and subsidies for private welfare - and how a trade-off between the two, in turn, affects income inequality. Christopher Faricy finds that both Democrats and Republicans have increased social spending over the last forty-two years. And while both political parties increase federal social spending, Democrats and Republicans differ in how they spend federal money, which socioeconomic groups benefit, and the resulting consequences for income inequality.

Download or read book Case Studies on Energy Subsidy Reform Lessons and Implications Supplement written by International Monetary Fund. Fiscal Affairs Dept. and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2013-01-28 with total page 119 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This supplement presents country case studies reviewing energy subsidy reform experiences, which are the basis for the reform lessons identified in the main paper. The selection of countries for the case studies reflects the availability of data and of previously documented evidence on country-specific reforms. The 22 country case studies were also chosen to provide cases from all regions and a mix of outcomes from reform. The studies cover 19 countries, including seven from sub-Saharan Africa, two in developing Asia, three in the Middle East and North Africa, four in Latin America and the Caribbean, and three in Central and Eastern Europe and the CIS. The case studies are organized by energy product, with 14 studies of the reform of petroleum product subsidies, seven studies of the reform of electricity subsidies, and a case study of subsidy reform for coal. The larger number of studies on fuel subsidies reflects the wider availability of data and past studies for these reforms. The structure of each case study is similar, with each one providing the context of the reform and a description of the reforms; discussion of the impact of the reform on energy prices or subsidies and its success or failure; mitigating measures that were implemented in an attempt to generate public support for the reform and offset adverse effects on the poor; and, finally, identification of lessons for designing reforms.

Download or read book Can Government Transfers Make Energy Subsidy Reform Socially Acceptable written by Filip Schaffitzel and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Energy subsidies account for about 7% of Ecuador's yearly public spending, or two thirds of the fiscal deficit. Removing these subsidies would yield clear economic and environmental benefits and help implement climate targets set in the Paris Agreement. However, expected adverse effects on vulnerable households can make reforms politically difficult. To inform policy design, we use household survey data from Ecuador in combination with augmented input-output data to assess the distributional impacts of energy subsidy reform. We find that in absolute terms energy subsidies benefit richer households more than poor ones. Relative to household income, subsidy removal without compensation would be regressive for diesel and LPG, progressive for gasoline, and approximately neutral for electricity. We then analyze how a fraction of financial resources freed up by subsidy reform could be used to mitigate income losses for poor households by means of in-kind and in-cash revenue recycling schemes. Our results indicate that removing all energy subsidies and increasing the existing social protection program, Bono de Desarrollo Humano, by nearly US$ 50 per month would confer net benefits of almost 10% of their current income to the poorest quintile. In addition, more than 1.3 billion US$ would still be available for the public budget after the reform. Finally, we conduct expert interviews to evaluate the political and institutional challenges related to energy subsidy reform. We identify two combinations of reform options and recycling schemes that would benefit the poorest 40% of households and are deemed to be feasible: eliminating subsidies on gasoline while increasing the amount transferred to vulnerable households through the Bono de Desarrollo Humano and replacing universal LPG subsidies with targeted LPG vouchers.

Download or read book Do Policies for Phasing Out Fossil Fuel Subsidies Deliver what They Promise written by Eirik S. Lindebjerg and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fossil fuel subsidies reform has been intensively debated and promoted as a concrete step towards sustainable development, with anticipated benefits of reduced carbon emissions, saved public spending, and improved social distribution. But does this "triple-win" policy deliver what it promises? This working paper focuses on the social "win"--The narrative of social and distributional gains of the energy subsidies reform. The research follows a comparative analysis approach. Three countries were selected as target for in-depth case studies based on their diverse political, economic and social contexts: Ghana, Indonesia and Iran. We examine in each case the distributional effects of subsidy removal, the design and implementation of social programmes and their impact on welfare, as well as the political economy around sustainability of the reform. Based on comparative studies across the three cases, a set of political, economic and social factors are identified to have key impact on the social outcome of reforms. The key conclusions are as follows. There is no quick fix for social "win". Instead, the social outcome is influenced by a set of political, economic and social factors at different levels. Governments need to put the energy subsidies reform in the bigger context and manage the complex mix of influencing factors, to anchor the policy on a broad coalition of interests. Long-term political commitment to subsidies reform is key. A clearly communicated commitment would help win trust from the public in energy subsidies reforms and support for the government to implement relevant policies. A long-term and gradual reform strategy which takes into account both immediate cushion and long-term distributional effects is essential to achieving social gains. Social gain needs to have a prominent role in energy subsidy reforms. The three case studies indicate a clear dynamic between social gains and subsidy reform processes. Thorough analysis using a social lens approach can identify important factors to be taken into account for reform policies to be sustained and more importantly, deliver a social win. Rather than to be taken as a given, a social win from fossil fuel subsidy reforms requires the social dimension to be a central part of the reform policy.

Download or read book Public Expenditure Review Summary written by Weltbank and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Public expenditure on household-based social assistance (SA) in Indonesia has increased significantly since 2005. From a low base in the early 2000s, Indonesia's aggregate national public expenditures on SA permanently increased from 2005 after the central government allocated a portion of the savings from fuel subsidy reforms to a number of SA initiatives. In 2010, national expenditures on SA are estimated at Rp 29,709 billion (US$ 3.3 billion), equivalent to 2.6 percent of total national expenditures and 0.5 percent of gross domestic product (GDP). Indonesia's strong fiscal position leaves Indonesia well placed to further increase SA expenditures. Declining debt payments and subsidy reductions have opened up fiscal space over the past decade and supported a general increase in social sector and SA spending. With debt-to-GDP of just 25 percent in 2010, Indonesia could further increase expenditure on both items without raising debt levels. Nonetheless, current expenditures on SA are dwarfed by spending on regressive energy subsidies which in some years consume over 20 percent of total national expenditures. The increase in spending after 2005 primarily reflects greater central government investment in programs to protect poor households from fuel and food shocks as well as large health and education expenses. The central government is the dominant player in the SA sector, accounting for almost 90 percent of total expenditures. In years when the government has increased regulated fuel prices (2005-06 and 2008-09), the largest compensatory SA response has been an unconditional cash transfer program (BLT) to vulnerable households to help cushion them from the inflationary shock.

Download or read book Public Expenditure Review Summary written by World Bank and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Public expenditure on household-based social assistance (SA) in Indonesia has increased significantly since 2005. From a low base in the early 2000s, Indonesia's aggregate national public expenditures on SA permanently increased from 2005 after the central government allocated a portion of the savings from fuel subsidy reforms to a number of SA initiatives. In 2010, national expenditures on SA are estimated at Rp 29,709 billion (USD 3.3 billion), equivalent to 2.6 percent of total national expenditures and 0.5 percent of gross domestic product (GDP). Indonesia's strong fiscal position leaves Indonesia well placed to further increase SA expenditures. Declining debt payments and subsidy reductions have opened up fiscal space over the past decade and supported a general increase in social sector and SA spending. With debt-to-GDP of just 25 percent in 2010, Indonesia could further increase expenditure on both items without raising debt levels. Nonetheless, current expenditures on SA are dwarfed by spending on regressive energy subsidies which in some years consume over 20 percent of total national expenditures. The increase in spending after 2005 primarily reflects greater central government investment in programs to protect poor households from fuel and food shocks as well as large health and education expenses. The central government is the dominant player in the SA sector, accounting for almost 90 percent of total expenditures. In years when the government has increased regulated fuel prices (2005-06 and 2008-09), the largest compensatory SA response has been an unconditional cash transfer program (BLT) to vulnerable households to help cushion them from the inflationary shock.