The COVID-19 pandemic, which accelerated global public goods discussions and affected the public finance indicators of many countries negatively, accelerated. For this reason, the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, which is one of the global public goods, on the central government budget and borrowing fields in Turkey are the focus of the present study. For this purpose, the budget revenues, expenditures, and borrowing data that were obtained by using various official reports and budget laws were analyzed empirically and comparatively. The central government's budget deficit increased by 173% in April 2020 when compared to the same month of the previous year and was financed primarily by domestic borrowing. The external debt use, on the other hand, increased, especially in the second six-month period in October and December. Towards the end of the year, the fiscal policy measures that were taken to decrease the economic impact of the pandemic reduced the burden on the budget.
TopGlobal Public Good: The Covid-19 Pandemic
The globalization phenomenon has brought with it global transformations in “public goods”, which are included in the public economy, as well as in many other fields. Although this transformation, which has brought the concept of “global public good” to the fore, is subject to different classifications, it also hosts problems arising from the consumption of common resources on a global scale.
Rapid technological change and a significant reduction in transportation and communication costs have made global public goods important at this point (Nordhaus, 2005, pp. 2).
In this context, health is a global public good and has two important externalities (negative and positive). The first of these is that epidemics have a global character by influencing other people and countries. The second is that the external benefit created by protecting a person or country from epidemics also reduces risks for other people and countries. Based on this explanation, COVID-19, which is included in the scope of epidemic diseases, is the most important issue emerging as a public harm among cross-border externalities today. As a result of globalization, the COVID-19 epidemic causes significant human losses and trauma, as well as negative demand and supply-side effects on the economy.
When the Covid-19 pandemic is considered in the framework of global public goods, the prevention of pandemics is defined as the “core global public good”; and the services at the national level, such as the improvement of general health services, are described as “complementary global public goods” (Binger, 2003). As we mentioned before, two important externalities created by health services appear here as well. The first one is that infectious diseases spread to other countries and people by carrying a global nature in the scope of negative externality (Kanbur et al.,1999, pp. 56). The second is to reduce the disease risk of other countries and people by treating infectious diseases or taking various protection measures in the scope of a positive externality. Global public goods also have a stock externality. However, this is often ignored. Its effects depend on the stock of a variable whose effects accumulate over time.