Fiscal gap Fiscal gap The fiscal gap is a measure of a government's total indebtedness proposed by economists Laurence Kotlikoff and Alan Auerbach, who define it as the difference between the present value of all of government's projected financial obligations, including future expenditures, including servicing outstanding official federal debt, and the present value of all projected future tax and other receipts, including income accruing from the government's current ownership of financial assets. According to Kotlikoff and Auerbach, the "fiscal gap" accounting method can be used to calculate the percentage of necessary tax increases or spending reductions needed to close the fiscal gap
Fiscal federalism in a particular country, can be determined by using certain criteria that the author has evolved. The kind of policy solution to be applied will depend on the nature of asymmetry (VFA). Thus, there can be three types of VFAs: The VFI-VFG-VFD offers a nice framework to understand and debate issues surrounding fiscal federalism. VFD is a concept that has entered the lexicon of fiscal federalism and has the power to clarify the debate on intergovernmental financial relations. Vertical Fiscal Gap as the revenue deficiency arising from a mismatching between revenue means and expenditure needs. OECD Network on Fiscal Relations