Open AccessFiscal Response to Terrorism in Pakistan: The Role of Institutions
Author(s) -
Tahir Mukhtar,
Zainab Jehan
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
journal of quantitative methods
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2522-2260
pISSN - 2522-2252
DOI - 10.29145/2021/jqm/050107
Subject(s) - terrorism , revenue , fiscal policy , tax revenue , government revenue , economics , position (finance) , government (linguistics) , distributed lag , quality (philosophy) , economic policy , business , public economics , monetary economics , finance , political science , linguistics , philosophy , law , econometrics , epistemology
This study empirically estimates the fiscal consequences of terrorism in Pakistan by using annual time series data from 1984 to 2016. By employing the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) technique, the study has gauged the impact of terrorist incidents on two important facets of fiscal policy, namely, tax revenue and defense spending. The results reveal that terrorism has detrimental ramifications for fiscal policy in Pakistan. Specifically, on the one hand, an increase in terrorist incidents tends to bring a fall in tax revenue while on the other hand, they induce a rise in defense outlays, thus deteriorating both fronts of the fiscal position. Notably, the moderating role of institutional quality appears significant and indicates that institutional quality has not only a significant direct impact on fiscal policy, but it also helps in completely mitigating (reducing) the harmful impact of terrorism on defense spending (tax revenue) in Pakistan. These findings suggest that there is a need to take appropriate steps for strengthening institutional setup to control the fallouts of terrorism on fiscal behavior of the government of Pakistan.
Keywords: Terrorism; Tax Revenue; Institutional Quality; ARDL
JEL Classification: E62; H2; E02; H5; F35