International Comparisons
Who Will Pay? Long-Term Fiscal Challenges Facing the Industrialized World
Research Report
March 2004
Peter Heller, Deputy Director of the Fiscal Affairs Department, IMF
AARP Headquarters
601 E Street, NW
Washington, D.C.
Policymakers today confront a number of profound developments, whose significance is certain to increase over the next several decades. Some of these are widely anticipated: demographic and climate change, the scarcity of natural resources, and public health. Other structural issues, such as globalization, rapid technology change, and security threats, will continue to transform the world economy.
Who Will Pay?, makes the case that, despite the fact that generating debate, let alone action, on such thorny issues is not easy, governments need to enact policy changes now to take account of the potential fiscal consequences of these developments. Who Will Pay? argues that a multi-pronged approach is vital, involving strengthened analyses, greater attention to long-term issues and risk factors in the budget framework, institutional reforms that try to address the myopic political economy biases of politicians and the public, and a blend of aggregate belt tightening and sectoral policy reforms.
Resources
Who Will Pay? Coping with Aging Societies, Climate Change and Other Long-Term Fiscal Challenges
Peter Heller's Powerpoint Presentation
Peter S. Heller received his Ph. D. in Economics from Harvard University in 1971. Before joining the IMF in 1977, where he is Deputy Director of the Fiscal Affairs Department, he was Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, as well as Research Associate of the Research Center at the Economics Department, where he lead missions to Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia. He has also served as Consultant for the World Bank and the Agency for International Development. He has worked as a fiscal expert in a large number of countries and has published many articles in leading professional journals. His major interests are public finance (as relates to public expenditure policy, social security and fiscal policy), economic development and health economics.