Characteristics of budget risks: the essence, current approaches and place in the system of financial risks

In foreign reports and reports of working groups regarding the management of public finances, risks that pose a threat to the financial and, in particular, the public sector, are defined by the broad term “fiscal risks”. However, the identity of the concepts of “fiscal risks” and “budgetary risks” within the framework of “financial risks” is a matter of debate. The article compares the essence of budgetary and fiscal risks in accordance with established international practices (including studies by foreign authors and approaches of international financial institutions and organizations), as well as the approaches of domestic researchers, and also determines the place of budgetary risks in the system of financial risks. The author also implemented a scholastic analysis of the essence of budget risks, formulated and analyzed key approaches to determining the essence of risk in public and municipal finance and corporate finance. The author notes the problem of the absence of a materiality criterion for the analyzed volume of definitions due to the disproportionality and specificity of the execution of each individual budget of the budgetary system, which does not allow us to talk about the introduction of a fixed threshold value applied for each budget risk. The author additionally notes significant differences in the approach to the nature of risk in public and municipal finance and corporate finance.