Counting the Oil Money and the Elderly: Norway's Public Sector Balance Sheet

Ezequiel Cabezon and Christian Henn

No 2018/190, IMF Working Papers from International Monetary Fund

Abstract: Based on a permanent income analysis, Gagnon (2018) has prominently suggested that Norway has saved too much, thereby free-riding on the rest of the world for demand. Our public sector balance sheet analysis comes to the opposite conclusion, chiefly because it also accounts for future aging costs. Unsurprisingly, we find that Norway’s current assets exceed its liabilities by some 340 percent of mainland GDP. But its nonoil fiscal deficits have grown very large (to almost 8 percent of mainland GDP) and aging pressures are only commencing. Therefore, Norway’s intertemporal financial net worth (IFNW) is negative, at about -240 percent of mainland GDP. As IFNW represents an intertemporal budget constraint, this implies that Norway’s savings are likely insufficient to address aging costs without additional fiscal action.

Keywords: WP; mainland GDP; oil price; GPFG asset; asset price; asset stock; Public Sector Balance Sheet; Intertemporal Fiscal Balances; Debt Sustainability; Norway; statistics Norway; Norwegian krone; Norway's intertemporal financial net worth; Intertemporal public sector balance sheet; Norway's assets; Norway's IFNW; nonfinancial assets; GPFG consist; price development; Financial statements; Oil prices; Asset prices; Aging; Global (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 55
Date: 2018-08-27
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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